The Barricade Boys: West End Party – Adelphi Theatre

The Barricade Boys: West End Party at the Adelphi Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Any show with the word party in its title clearly has little intention of taking itself too seriously, but with its high calibre cast boasting impeccable musical theatre credentials, this production proved to be a nicely balanced mix of high octane singing and light entertainment/rock and pop favourites plus touches of self-deprecating humour along the way.

Described as a ‘jaw-dropping musical mashup from [the] international supergroup’, this line-up of Barricade Boys – Kieran Brown, Craig Mather, Simon Schofield and Scott Garnham – all have musical CVs to die for and being together in this format for some eight years, each core member oozes a confidence and vocal strength that many can only aspire to. Since its inception, the Barricade Boys show has featured, we were told, some 82 different performers, but it’s this fab four who have clearly got the concept down to almost perfection. Almost because despite the many musical gems during the evening, the running order didn’t do them any favours and the very diverse musical offerings disrupted the flow, certainly in Act I.

Some choices, for such a talented foursome are questionable. If you threw a souvenir programme out of the front door of the Adelphi, you’d probably hit about three shows covering ABBA tunes, so why a medley of the Swedish supergroup was included here was anyone’s guess.

Among the many, fine musical homages to what is clearly one of their main loves, Les Misérables, there were other delightful moments, like the ‘Childhood Medley’, each member recalling how their love of musical theatre began and memories about early roles. For example, Schofield starring when very young in the lead role in the original cast of Oliver!, his version of ‘Where is Love?’ being beautifully delivered and a fitting reminder of just how stunning Lionel Bart’s mesmeric score was and always will be. Just before, Brown’s perfect execution of ‘The Music of the Night’ as The Phantom of the Opera, a role he played to critical acclaim, transformed the Adelphi to Her Majesty’s Theatre for just a few magical minutes.

Even given their undoubted collective entertainment value, a few special guests were welcome to mix things up a little and the contributions of Courtney Bowman (Pretty Woman, Legally Blonde), stage and screen star Fra Fee and Matt Henry were varied and impressive, Henry’s striking jacket and trousers twinkling away under the spotlights and his star quality shining even brighter, not a single sweet wrapper rustling during his outstanding performance of ‘Not My Father’s Son’ from Kinky Boots.

There was also the novelty of a couple of appearances of what seemed like a few thousand very young, youngsters from a north London Stagecoach school, debuting with their take on ‘Revolting Children’ from Matilda and bringing a slice of quite charming, but somewhat chaotic levity to the main musical fare.

At the top of their game and on stage together, this steeped-in musical theatre foursome was very impressive, like when performing their innovative and probably unique version of ‘Master of the House,’ with a Michael Bublé-esque twist and arrangement. Each clearly knows their own strengths and what exactly they can bring performance-wise to the Barricade Boys table and under the very passionate, excitable and expert musical supervision of James Doughty, it would be hard for the format not to succeed. Watching him on stage was almost sufficient entertainment in itself.

There were segments in the show which veered ever so slightly towards coach party karaoke territory but the old maxim does state ‘just give the public what it wants’. Does an audience really want to hear ‘Waterloo’ yet again though? Definitely maybe as Mr Gallagher might have said, but you could say the same about Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, another song that’s been covered ad nauseam and often quite appallingly by various artists. Somewhat unexpectedly then, the Barricade Boys’ cover proved to be one of the real highlights of the evening and, I suppose, went to prove that with the right talent and execution, there’s still plenty of musical mileage in the old rock classics.

It’s as if the group feels the need to cover all the musical genre options, but the danger is that that waters down the effectiveness of their overall music product. When they are in their real comfort zone however, namely musical theatre, they are fabulously entertaining and close to perfection.

Derek Smith