Beyond The Barricade at the New Wimbledon Theatre and on tour until 4 July 2020.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Every year I try to see Beyond The Barricade which is one great show song after another and every year it delivers.
They are in their 21st year now and founder members Andy Reiss and David Fawcett, a bit greyer these days, are still there bringing the magic of musical theatre to the masses.
The female half of the group is not so constant. Poppy Tierney joined in 2017 after working with Reiss on an Evita tour and the one change since I reviewed them at Richmond a year ago brings in Jodie Beth Meyer, a soprano of exceptional clarity.
Her Blood Brothers duet with Fawcett on ‘Marilyn Monroe’ was funny and beautifully acted. Meyer may be the 32nd female to tread the boards with Barricade but all the travelling involved in taking the concert around the country on top of a packed itinerary of one-nighters must take its toll.
After Wimbledon there are 26 towns and cities to be visited plus eight more in a two-week tour of Australia. Avoiding voice wear and tear and infections cannot be easy.
When Reiss and Fawcett, having met on the first Manchester tour of Les Misérables, decided to launch the group, the one criterion was that every member must have performed in that must-see show which celebrates its 35th birthday in October.
The excellent Tierney qualified having played Cosette on the national tour while Meyer was Eponine in a concert version of Les Mis in Guernsey.
Wimbledon, with its 1,500 seats, takes a bit of filling but there were enough there to give the quartet a long-standing ovation. It’s a simple enough format: sing famous show tunes well and respectfully, give them plenty of value for money, punters go home happy and come back the next year.
The Barricade crew, and that includes musicians Daniel Goodger (keyboards), Russ Kennedy (bass guitar/tuba) and Dave Williams (drums/percussion), have to be tough. It’s a gruelling show featuring songs from 16 stage-and-screen musicals plus ‘The Show Must Go On’, the 1991 Queen hit that opens the evening.
A glorious medley from Miss Saigon follows, then ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel and on to Phantom, Hamilton and The Lion King. The one change from last year gives Come From Away, one of 2019’s best new musicals, a place on top table with its big number ‘Welcome to the Rock’.
For a change of pace, there’s what they call “a silly medley” from movie musicals – ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’, ‘Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Boo’, ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ and ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’.
The second half features Blood Brothers, Chicago, Starlight Express, Jesus Christ Superstar and la piece de resistance, a nice fat chunk of Les Misérables with ‘One Day More’ as a thrilling encore. Every one a winner.
Amazing what a full, powerful sound can be achieved by three multi-tasking musicians, conducted by Reiss whose version of ‘Stars’ was as well sung as anything all night.
Beyond The Barricade launched its first national tour, doing 30 gigs in 1999, a figure which 20 years later had almost tripled. “I can’t think there’s a town of any size in the UK where we have not sung,” said Reiss who directs the show and is a man of many parts with singer, actor, keyboard player and producer on his CV.
Both he and Fawcett have played Jean Valjean, the latter, with his wonderfully rich voice taking the lead many times during two years in the West End as Brujon and covering for the main part. Fawcett does the jokes too.
Reiss takes pride in that every note, whether sung or played, goes out live. No tapes or backing tracks. The show uses back-screen images plus smoke and flashing lights but basically it is a no-nonsense format and all the better for that.
Life without musicals? It just wouldn’t bear thinking about.
Jeremy Chapman
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