Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – The Lowry, Salford and Touring

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie ran at The Lowry, Salford from 1-12 September 2021 and tours until 30 April 2022.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

The clock on the wall has moved by quite a considerable amount since Everybody’s Talking About Jamie was due to tour around the UK tour for the first time.

This roundly enjoyable touring version opened in February 2020 at the Lyceum, Sheffield – sister theatre to the Crucible where this Sheffield-set musical made its debut – before Covid struck in March and curtailed the rest of its maiden journey around the UK.

Rescheduled several times, it now resumes its UK tour in Salford in the same month that the West End production completes its – similarly interrupted – first run at the Apollo and the well-received Everybody’s Talking About Jamie film adaptation arrives on streaming service Amazon Prime Video (after its UK cinema release was also derailed by the pandemic).

So there’s suddenly a lot of Jamie to go round. But while the film version – made by the same creative team and all the better for it – does a perfectly good job of capturing Jamie’s essence, it’s really on stage that the show deserves to be seen. The joie de vivre of the performers and enthusiastic relief from an audience largely starved of live entertainment for the last 18 months is palpable. And with its punch-the-air optimism and empowering message of acceptance, the show has the power to provide a much-needed tonic.

This is basically the same show – inspired by the BBC Three documentary Jamie: Drag Queen at 16 – that first delighted audiences during its brief run at the Crucible in 2017. But the intervening years have seen some of its grittier edges knocked off and it’s become a slightly bigger, broader, funnier and – especially with the effervescent Layton Williams in the title role – more crowd-pleasing show in the process.

The addition of Shane Richie as drag shop owner and inadvertent mentor Hugo to the cast – like Williams, reprising his West End role – has increased its comedy credentials further. But although Richie brings his trademark warm, genial, knockabout humour to the role, he’s careful not to pull shade, go too over the top or make his transformation into the legendary Loco Chanelle too panto. It’s still very much The Jamie Show and he definitely knows it.

Elsewhere in the cast, the show’s secret weapon is still Jamie’s best friend and confidante Pritti. Sharan Phull gives the character the right amount of sweetness and strength, with her touching performance of ‘It Means Beautiful’ providing one of the Act II highlights. That section is also notable for Anna Fleischle’s ingenious bedroom set which, like the rest of the staging, folds out seamlessly and makes the most of Luke Halls’ innovative but not-too-distracting video projections and Lucy Carter’s clever but subtle lighting effects.

Matt Ryan, stepping into Jonathan Butterell’s shoes as director for this tour, also marshals the ensemble scenes with aplomb, with Kate Prince’s well deployed choreography particularly effective in the infectiously rambunctious classroom numbers like the opener ‘You Don’t Even Know It’ and the incessantly catchy title song. The supporting characters have always been lightly drawn, but the production still gives Jamie’s classroom friends and foes enough individual opportunities to shine.

But, of course, the relationship that matters most in Tom MacRae’s book is the one between Jamie and his mum Margaret. It’s also the element where MacRae’s lyrics and Dan Gillespie Sells’ music and orchestrations excel, providing the show with its most emotional and memorable songs.

Amy Ellen Richardson doesn’t disappoint as Margaret, either in her believable rapport in tender scenes with Williams’ Jamie, comic back-and-forth with Shobna Gulati’s no-nonsense Ray or in belting out the show’s most roof-raising songs. Of these, the Abba-esque ‘If I Met Myself Again’ is still the standout from Act I, while the showstopping ‘He’s My Boy’ is a welcome reminder of musical theatre’s ability to, at its best, touch the heart, raise the spirits and unite a room full of strangers as one.

It’s emblematic of the show as a whole, which audiences need to see strutting its stuff live, tucked and in the flesh while they still can.

Chris Bartlett