Ghost the Musical was reviewed at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London where it continues until 8 February 2025. The tour continues until 3 May 2025.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
While this revival of the 2011 musical version of the biggest-grossing movie of 1990 blew away our reviewer Hannah Grimmette at the beginning of the Ghost the Musical tour in August, for me it joins the ranks of iconic films that don’t translate into classic musicals when put on a stage.
Entertaining to a degree, hitting the mark more often than not, enthusiastically performed and a decent night out, but nothing special.
Plenty of money is made because there is a ready-made audience which worshipped the originals on the silver screen but, come on, were An Officer and a Gentleman, Calendar Girls, Strictly Ballroom, The Devil Wears Prada or Ghost half as good with a few songs worked into them and paraded as stage musicals? And that’s just five.
Not that Ghost the Musical is a disaster, it’s nothing like that. Director Bob Tomson has put on a workmanlike and workable show for this long tour. But it needs more magic. On the back of a rave review that finished by saying “If I could give it six stars, I would”, I arrived at Wimbledon with extra tissues fully prepared for a teary evening. Nobody loves a weepie more but, sad to say, I didn’t need them, beautifully though Rebekah Lowings and Josh St Clair sang and acted the lead roles of loved-up Molly and Sam in their Brooklyn apartment.
The chemistry is there, the talent is there, and their ‘Unchained Melody’ duet deserved all its applause but I was more moved by Emilia Fox’s dreamily-shot wedding dance with her Jack in Silent Witness.
If there’s any pop song that should move me, it’s ‘Unchained Melody’, part of my life since I was a teenager. When it came out in 1955, written by Alex North and Hy Zaret (neither credited in the tour programme) and sung by Todd Duncan in a little film unsurprisingly called Unchained, everyone rushed to record it and buy it.
I loved the smooth Al Hibbler American version but it was a quintessentially old-fashioned British crooner called Jimmy Young who topped the UK charts with this earworm that had people humming it in the streets and on the buses. And, yes, it was the same Jimmy Young who went on to become a national treasure with his own long-running current affairs radio show and a Sunday newspaper column.
But that was only the start of it. Ten years later the Righteous Brothers took a famous revival to immortality and it is their lead singer Bobby Hatfield’s vocals that made it the definitive one. It became a jukebox standard, and as the theme music for Ghost, their version was undoubtedly a box office asset in 1990 for the Oscar-nominated romantic fantasy thriller starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.
But we’re not even halfway through the ‘Unchained Melody’ story. It became the first song to be No. 1 in the UK charts for four different acts in four different decades spanning 57 years. In 1995 the Robson & Jerome version – actors Robson Green and Jerome Flynn – topped the ratings for seven weeks, masterminded by a young, thrusting opportunist called Simon Cowell. And in 2002 Pop Idol runner-up Gareth Gates sold 1.35 million copies of the song he had performed in the final, topping the charts for seven weeks.
Even Elvis Presley sang it at the last concert before his death, and it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t: there are getting on for 700 recordings, so in a way ‘Unchained Melody’ is as famous as Ghost itself.
Whereas in the movie it is a constant presence, we hear it three times in the musical, once at the start when Sam picks up his guitar to serenade Molly, once interrupted on the radio, and once as a romantic finale. The rest of the song list, safe in the hands of musical director Jordan Alexander and a band of six, is an add-on to Bruce Joel Rubin’s book by Eurythmics co-founder Dave Stewart and fellow Hall of Famer Glen Ballard. It should have been a potent mix but their contribution is a bit of a curate’s egg, some banging, most forgettable.
I liked ‘Three Little Words’ (when Molly chides Sam for not being able to say “I love you” and Sam responds that actions speak louder than words) and Molly’s solo ‘With You’ is a real heartstrings-tugger, while ‘Are You a Believer?’ is an upbeat soul-infused antidote to the doleful ballads, some of which melodically and structurally sound remarkably similar.
For the laughs we have to thank Jacqui Dubois as fraudulent psychic Oda Mae Brown, a lady who sure knows how to work a stage. In that ‘Believer’ number she has power-packed assistance from Tanisha Butterfield (Clara) and Keiahna Jackson-Jones (Louise), two names to watch who seemed to be in competition to hold their big notes the longest. I’d say it was a draw. There’s a lovely little cameo too from Tim Maxwell-Clarke as a homespun hospital ghost.
The dance routines (choreographer: Alistair David) are fit for purpose but no more, the best thing about the set (Mark Bailey) is the clever Bronx subway train and Molly and Sam’s cheeky phallic pottery creation inevitably attracted a few titters. But none of the “new” songs are a patch on ‘Unchained Melody’ and for a musical to truly take off no old banger should be leading the way even if it is a Rolls-Royce.
Jeremy Chapman
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.