Alexandra Burke in The Bodyguard at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff and Touring. Picture: Paul Coltas
The Bodyguard continues at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff until 27 June and is on tour in the UK and Ireland until January 2016.
Star rating: 4 stars ★ ★ ★ ★
It is the fashion now for successful West End musicals to come out on tour while still basking in critical and box office glory. Olivier Award-nominated The Bodyguard has taken just five months from the end of its triumphant two years at the Adelphi to embark on a year-long jaunt around the UK and Ireland.
One major advantage is that Alexandra Burke, the X Factor winner who collected five-star reviews in London for the role played by Whitney Houston in the original 1992 Warner Bros film, has stayed with the show. There is drama aplenty in her role as a pop superstar in fear of attack from a would-be stalker. But it is her command of such Houston classics as ‘One Moment in Time’, ‘Queen of the Night’ and ’I Will Always Love You’ (one of the best-selling songs of all time) that is at the heart of this spectacularly presented show.
This is a love story as well, of course, for despite their initial clash over who is in charge, it is inevitable that her character, Rachel Marron, will fall in love with her eponymous former Secret Service bodyguard Frank Farmer, played by Stuart Reid. This does lead to some syrupy moments, although not in the nail-biting climax when the psychotic gunman threatens Marron at an Oscars ceremony.
But it is the Houston songbook that is the key to the musical’s success, and here Burke gives a stellar performance, holding the show together as she belts out a succession of soul classics in full command of both the high notes and the meaning in the lyrics.
Although he has the title role, Reid`s opportunities are somewhat thinner, with the ditching of the knife-throwing routine from Lawrence Kasdan’s original film (do I detect health and safety at work here?) depriving the part of some of its frisson. There is ample scope to shine, though, for Melissa James, as Rachel’s lovelorn sister Nicki, especially in her Act I rendering of ‘Saving All My Love For You’, while Mike Denman plays the baddie with such relish that there are pantomime-style boos when he takes his curtain call.
Writer Alexander Dinelaris has removed some of the over-sentimental aspects of the movie, allowing director Thea Sharrock to seamlessly marry the hit songs with the storyline. Even the use by designer Tim Hatley of photographic montage avoids the pitfall of turning The Bodyguard back into the movie version. Add in the splendid swing pit orchestra, led by Tom Gearing, and the show is set to wow audiences right the way through to its Christmas dates at the Palace Theatre, Manchester.
(At some performances Zoe Birkett – Pop Idol, Thriller Live, Priscilla Queen of the Desert – is the alternative Rachel Marron).
Jeremy Brien
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