West End in Blackpool is streaming until 9 July 2021.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
This 30-minute docu-concert is really a homage to the Winter Gardens, Empress Ballroom and all the rest of what makes Blackpool “the entertainment capital of the north” – as Kelsey-Beth Crossley puts it in her intro.
Nostalgia dominates. First we get Jodie Prenger with a suitably emotional, catch-in-the-throat rendering of ‘Send in the Clowns’ to set the scene.
Between numbers participants tell us more about the buildings and introduce each other as the piece continues – a neat way of creating an integrated whole with very few people in the building at the same time. It conveys a sense of space too.
Thus Prenger introduces Tom Lister who smilingly sings ‘Take All of Me’ (strong four-piece dance ensemble in support) to remind us of Frank Sinatra – one of the many Big Names who performed here. Judy Garland, Tommy Steele, Morecambe and Wise, Queen and The Rolling Stones are among a roll call of others mentioned in passing.
Later we get a nice account of Where Do I Begin?” from Crossley, with an oblique reference to her TV work with Lister on Emmerdale Farm.
And I really liked the impassioned rendering of ‘The Woman Takes It All’ by Laura Wilson.
Plenty of enjoyable material then. I learned a lot about Blackpool’s buildings and performance history. Nonetheless this is not a “show” by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a good idea (directed by Ashley Luke Lloyd) for a mini musical celebration and I’m glad to see a group of accomplished performers working but this is definitely a small scale Covid production with a mission rather than a piece of theatre.
Susan Elkin
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