The Musical of Musicals – Ye Olde Rose and Crown Theatre Pub, London

Writer – Eric Rockwell and Joanne Bogart

Director – Lydia Milman Schmidt

Reviewer – Joanna Forest

The Public Reviews Rating:

I absolutely loved this production of The Musical of Musicals. This evening for me was an absolute delight, a musical theatre lovers dream. Throughout we were treated to excellent singing, dancing and plenty of laughing. Why just enjoy just one musical when you can enjoy several…

With great choreography from Brendan Matthew and Lydia Milman Schmidt’s inventive direction, this makes for one very slick production. From Rogers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Kander and Ebb and Lloyd Webber, this cast breeze through their journey of paying homage to them all. The talented cast show us how versatile they are by expertly taking us through these different genres of musical theatre, which this show ingenuously links together.

Zoe Demetriou is lovely as the character June who appears in many different guises, in fact the only consistency about June is…she can’t pay her rent! Demetriou impressed with her ability to sing in any style, effortlessly ranging from high soprano to a mighty Broadway belt. With great comedy skills and terrific dancing ability as well, this truly was a great performance.

Ted McMillan shows us tonight, by playing Willy the romantic interest, how he has the charisma and talent to play any leading man. Willy remains steadfast in trying to help June pay her rent and totally charms us audience throughout. Maggie Robson as Abby, constantly dishing out advice, is hilarious: oozing stage presence she owned the stage and had the audience in the palm of her hand with some truly show-stopping moments.

The stand out performance of the night for me however was the talented Steven Sparling who fully embraced the role of the evil landlord Jitter. Sparling not only has great vocal ability but he impressed with his his acting skills too as he inhabited each different musical style so convincingly. He had the audience laughing out loud on so many occasions and whilst may have been doing a parody of the Phantom as ‘Sir Phantom Jitter of the Opera’ but his vocals proved this is a part he could in fact definitely play. The Speakeasy section was a highlight of the evening down to Sparlings creepy emcee/Jutter overseeing and taking total charge of this section. Utterly drawing the audience in and engaging with us completely. I noticed he had an album available ‘It Takes Two’ a collection of Stephen Sondheim duets, from what I saw this evening from this performer I will definitely be adding this to my cd collection.

There was sensitive and impressive musical direction from Aaron Clingham and it was lovely to see him interacting with the cast in such a charming way he as introduced each of the scenes for them. The set was simple but effective and the costumes perfectly reflected the different genres. This is not just a production for musical theatre fans, this is an amazing production for everyone – an absolute must see – if you don’t you are really missing out. A triumph for All Star Productions.