REVIEW: Club Tropicana at the New Wimbledon Theatre

This new musical makes its premier on tour around the UK, and its not often we get a new show like this. 

The show follows a couple, Olly and Lorraine, who break up on their wedding day. To cheer them up, their best friends take them on Holiday however all end up in the same hotel. 

At its heart, this is just a fun show. Is it changing the world? No. But it is making it slightly easier to live in when we can shows like this to escape to. This is Mamma Mia for the new ages, packed full with some of the classic tunes that everyone will know with a fresh take on them. 

The show, set in the 80’s, had a fresh and slick feel to it. The writing fitted the genre perfectly but managed to still create full and lovable characters. With the direction and choreography alongside a talented cast the show manages to tick all the boxes that you want when you go to a show like this. 

REVIEW: Club Tropicana at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking

Club Tropicana was a 1983 hit for Wham and reflected on the then boom for cheap package tours for singles under thirties and Michael Gyngell has taken the idea to write a musical based around the music from eighties set in Club in Spain. Strangely the song itself does not find its way into the show itself. The story line is very thin; Fawlty Towers Hotel Inspector meets Benidorm Live with Manuel replaced by Mrs Overall from Acorn Antiques. Indeed, very little of this production was original. Yet the audience of mainly middle-aged women loved the show who clearly wanted to escape a night in front of the TV listening to Brexit with their families!

The energetic young cast throw themselves into the show and the songs, said to be “20 of the Greatest 80’s hits”, if anything it reminds you that the eighties were not the greatest era of music! Often, we are not even given the full song, just short verses or background music while some piece of slapstick pantomime business is performed downstage. Whereas the “Rip it Up” shows seek to celebrate the music and the era, this show is a massive mickey take full of camp gay references and old-fashioned innuendo. When the girls order drinks, they are asked if they want a tight snatch or sex on the beach, the conveniently named cocktails and one young character declares “I am ready to have sex with anyone”.