Jon Robyns performed in concert at His Majesty’s Theatre, London.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
In celebration of working in the world of musical theatre for 20 years, leading man Jon Robyns took to the stage of His Majesty’s Theatre in his first West End solo concert.
From joining the UK tour of Miss Saigon in 2004 as understudy Chris after graduating from Mountview to currently leading The Phantom Of The Opera, Robyns’ CV and subsequent career is one that most artists would envy. A charming and charismatic performer, a natural funnyman, a gifted musician and with a brilliant voice to boot, technically we should hate him with outright jealousy, but as he proved on Sunday, you just can’t, and he deserves his success in spades.
Robyns’ structured the evening’s ‘Joncert’ around the concept of performing a song from a show or movie that opened in each year that he’s been working in the industry. This brought us a varied setlist from a wide variety of productions, most of which Robyns hadn’t himself performed in.
It would have been very easy for him to deliver a predictable list of his ‘Greatest Hits’, playing safe (which to be fair would’ve still been great), but instead he showed just how adaptable and versatile he is, lending his vocals to songs we’d never normally hear him sing, and he did a fantastic job. While a few more personal insights would have been nice to allow the audience to get to know Robyns himself better (and him being such a naturally playful storyteller), the strength of the vocals and the classiness of the production shone through.
Robyns was joined by fellow West End performers (and clearly great friends) Giles Terera, Cassidy Janson, Simon Lipkin and Lily Kerhoas, along with the South London Youth Theatre, of which Robyns is a patron. All of the featured guests were brilliant (even if the repeated shtick with Terera did lose its charm after a while), and the chemistry Robyns shared with each of them was evident.
The South London Youth Theatre also did themselves very proud in their performances of ‘When I Grow Up’ and ‘A Million Dreams’, not showing the slightest sign of nerves and delivering the numbers with energy and personality. There are definitely some future West End stars in this talented bunch.
Highlights included ‘The Music of My Soul’ (Robyns understudied Huey in the musical Memphis in 2009), an excellent ‘You’ll Be Back’ from Hamilton, and a beautiful rendition of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s ‘Hushabye Mountain’. Also, as an encore, Robyns performed ‘If You Were Gay’ from Avenue Q with Lipkin, complete with puppets and different voices, reminding us just how brilliant that show was. The ending focused on a show in which Robyns has played five roles – he left the audience spellbound with the stunning ‘Bring Him Home’.
A fantastic night showing off one of the West End’s most talented and nicest people, this Jon Robyns concert was a wonderful reminder of some lesser-known musical gems and a genuine pleasure to experience.
Rob Bartley
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.