West End Women – Cadogan Hall

West End Women at the Cadogan Hall, London.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ 

After the success of Lambert Jackson’s concert, There is Nothin’ Like a Dame last summer, the production company came back again to continue celebrating the best of women in musical theatre.

This show does pretty much what it says on the tin. It’s a show starring three West End Women: Lauren Samuels, Rachel John and Celinde Schoenmaker as they celebrate musical theatre’s leading ladies.

The women came together for a one-night-only performance in the grand Cadogan Hall to perform a nice mix of fan favourites and some lesser-known tunes. Despite having Lucy Drever presenting the night’s set up, very few of the songs received any form of introduction, leaving audience members whispering to their neighbour to ask if they knew the song or which from which show it came from with no way of finding out.  

The most wonderful part of the night was watching the future West End women show that the theatre world is in for a bright future with these soon to be leading ladies in the spotlight. The MX Masterclass performed ‘Blow, Gabriel, Blow’ from Anything Goes and their rendition of ‘America’ from West Side Story was truly one of the night’s highlights.  

Some more guest performers found their way to the stage after entering a competition to perform with the West End leading ladies. Lauren Shields, Kayla Carter and Martha Boon, opened the second act with Chicago’s ‘Cell Block Tango’ alongside Samuels, John and Schoenmaker.

Brady Isaacs Pearce, aged 18, wowed the audience with ‘A Piece of Sky’ from Yentl and Talia Robens, aged only 14, brought down the house with ‘Everything I Know’ from In The Heights.

Back to the West End Women, they started the night with the Gershwins’ ‘I Got Rhythm’ and delivered a perfectly lovely selection of songs throughout, ending with the most powerful female anthem, ‘I’m a Woman’ from Smokey Joe’s Cafe.

Samuels bowled the audience over with her take on ‘Maybe This Time’ from Cabaret, John gave a stunning performance of ‘Summertime’ from Porgy and Bess and Schoenmaker received a well-deserved standing ovation for reprising her role as Christine for ‘Think of Me’ from The Phantom of the Opera.

Together they sang ‘At the Ballet’ from A Chorus Line stunningly. However, it would have been nice to have seen some more group performances as it was more about each lady taking turns to do her own concert.

It felt that the set list was used to deliberately avoid any typical showstopping fan favourites but a few sprinkled throughout the show would have been welcome.

There seemed to be a lot of potential for this show to be brilliant. Perhaps with a longer running time there would have been more of an opportunity to celebrate the best of leading ladies and the characters they have played.

Tal Fox