The Wedding Singer Belts Them Out In Theatre Severn.

The Wedding Singer

Theatre Severn

12th September-16th September 2017

When a show bills itself as hilarious one always feels suspicious that they are saying it because sometimes others won’t. So, "The hilarious musical, The Wedding Singer,” is debatable.

Starring Ray Quinn (X-Factor) Cassie Compton (X factor) Jon Robyns (Avenue Q) and Ruth Madoc (Hi-De- Hi) on paper it promises to deliver a lot lot. Well one would have thought so but, the show itself as in the words on the page, seems fundamentally flawed. One may find it a little prosaic and uninspired. The story itself when you separated it from the spectacle is predictable, uncreative and about as far from hilarious as we are from London. It wasn’t.

The cast is brilliant, especially exciting to watch the little Crooner we call Ray Quinn. He is stunning. Talk about triple threat this lad has everything going on. His stagecraft is excellent his dancing comes from his heart as well as his feet and his singing Is superb. He could be massive but not with this script!

Set design nowadays is getting far more challenging, given the excellence we see on TV or in the Movies. So design has to be spot on. Perhaps this show is for even bigger stages, it looks cluttered. So as an aesthetic there is an element of failure. However the magical moving pieces of set and furniture are brilliantly clever and fun to see. Likewise the electric skycloth was deeply pleasing.  A lot of thought had gone into the set. It was minimalistic but very clever. However some of it might be a little bit lost.

Ruth Madoc? An interesting casting you may think and you might be right.  Given the script, she went from Hi De Hi to low de low. She played the Wedding Singer’s Gran and whilst she worked so hard on her part, the script again let her down. Still not spotting any hilarity here.

However one cannot stress enough about the technical brilliance of the show and the astonishing performances but the jokes were weak and lost. It was only really when they made references to homosexuals or rude bits of the body that the audience laughed out loud. A bit disappointing but sexual references always seem to get a laugh, break them down and they are not funny.

There any many components to a show, lighting, sound, direction, choreography and so on, however like an engine in your car, if it’s missing a part it won’t go. You might have the finest leather interior and A1 headlights but without an engine you have a tin box with chairs in. This show needs to look again at its engine and make sure it won’t fail.

The lighting plan is spectacular: Sitting by the lighting guy is the one they say is, calling the show. He primes the lighting operator when to prepare for the next change. They have to work well together in this show, with a million lighting cues, they get it spot on. Good to see. Whoever calls this one has their work cut out as the changes are often and quick. Technically it went down perfectly and in this particular performance if there were any errors, none were seen.

I think this show might as easily be called The Marmite show and my wish is for you to go and see it and say Lewis got it wrong. But watch the performers and see them work to get this thing to fly. It’s an uphill struggle in this instance but nevertheless they crack on.

The Wedding Singer runs until the end of the week so plenty of chance to go and see what’s happening.

This is a Three Star Review

Owen J.Lewis