Rosie The Musical – Original Studio Cast Recording (Cavendish Records).Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★The show has been gestating for more than a decade but finally award-winning composer Chris Broom is ready to launch his first musical and if Rosie looks as good on stage as it sounds on this taster, it’s going to be as much the talk of the town as its heroine, Rosie Boote, was at the end of the 19th century when the Gaiety Girl’s romance with a titled toff scandalised London society.
Lord Geoffrey Taylour, a lieutenant in the Irish Guards, fell for the chorus girl who had come over from Ireland to make her name on the London stage and although tremendous efforts were made to stop them, the sweethearts tied the knot in 1901 and the colleen from Tipperary became the Marchioness of Headfort, a pillar of the upper classes that had scorned her.
Guildford-based Broom stumbled upon this true story when researching his great-grandmother, a famous opera singer of the time, as a suitable topic for his first musical and immediately saw its potential. As head of a record company specialising in light classical and contemporary music, he was introduced to Lucy Thomas, then only a 13-year-old but already a singer with the voice of an angel. He could see his Rosie in her and the very first song they recorded together, ‘One Day’, leads off this album, bookending the CD with the stirring finale ‘We Can Change the World’, coincidentally their latest collaboration six years later, and it’s an absolute cracker.
Five solo albums and her own vibrantly successful YouTube channel later, Thomas, now 19 but a schoolgirl only eight months ago, stands on the brink of bringing Broom’s vision to glorious reality. There is little doubt she has the voice to take her to the top. She already has a big fan base. Whether she has the acting chops we shall have to wait and see!
Rosie The Musical (music and lyrics by Broom, book by Sam Babenia) will first be seen in a concert version in the autumn, with the real thing premiering in 2025. But on 1 March you can listen to what it’s all about on this CD. Broom’s soaring melodies mesh with lush, romantic orchestrations behind the voices of the two lovers, played by Thomas and Will Callan – currently Marius in Les Misérables – as they duet on two of the best tracks, ‘Above the Clouds’ and ‘Hold On’.
What may well turn out to be the most popular number, ‘I Still Believe in Love’, is not sung by Rosie but by her Gaiety best friend Gina. It is performed here by 2022 Sondheim Society Student of the Year and Mamma Mia! I Have A Dream contestant Desmonda Cathabel, a rising star much in demand. It is rare to find the perfect song finding the perfect voice for it but Cathabel and ‘I Still Believe in Love’ is a marriage made in heaven.
The song has been released as a single to digital platforms and YouTube. I am thrilled to have played a tiny part in this union as it was on my recommendation that Broom and Cathabel got together to record this heartbreaker. Sadly, with the role being only a small one, Desmonda is unlikely to be playing Gina in the actual show.
The other “heartbreak” number is ‘Broken Dreams’, another absolute winner superbly handled by Thomas who features on nine of the 12 tracks – ‘Starlight’ and ‘Suddenly’ are two more than linger in the mind. If one wanted to be picky, you could say a number of the ballads are similarly paced and more variety would give the CD a better balance. But this is not the whole score, Broom tells me, and a humorous song and some up-tempo ones are to come.
Besides, there’s a distinct change of pace with ‘Romano’s’ by the admirable Kantos Chamber Choir, a song centred on a popular meeting-place restaurant, then in the Strand, where the Gaiety boss had negotiated half-price meals for the girls. And there’s charming backing to Thomas on ‘Dear Lord, We Thank You For the Day’ from the St Bede’s Catholic School Ormskirk Chamber Choir on a CD I’m loving more and more by the hour.
The original studio cast recording has been produced by Broom and Cavendish Records and is available from 1 March. Well worth a listen or three.
Jeremy Chapman
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