I Can't Sing!: Musical Theatre Review

The London Palladium hosts the world premiere of I Can’t Sing!, the new musical written by Harry Hill. The musical pokes fun at the reality TV show, the X Factor, however this show is more F Factor than X Factor.

Chenice and her grandpa live in a caravan below a fly over and eat the road kill they catch, after picking up Chenices post off the floor Max, a plumber, volunteers to fix her boiler. After her grandpa dying and her house being reposed Max pushes her to enter the X Factor. Believe it or not they manage to spread this story over the course of the whole first act. In the second act we see the live finals of the X Factor and the drama unravels as Simon and Jordy (Cheryl Cole… clearly refused to let them use her name. And I don’t blame her) split Max and Chenice up. After Max wins back Chenices heart the winner is announced and an ‘interesting’ twist shakes up the ending. 

I’ll start by saying this isn’t actually as bad as you’d think, it has some good songs and some of the gags go down well. However when you have a gag every 10 seconds it starts to get old after the first 15 minutes. The show is Viva Forever with a bigger budget. 

Shrek the Musical: Theatre Review

Shrek the Musical opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on the 14th June 2011 after having a successful run on Broadway and on tour in the USA. The show has received lots of publicity from having stars such as Amanda Holden featured so my expectation was reasonably high because of the hype that the producers had surrounded the show with. However, I can say I am more than disappointed with this production.

The show was not like the original Broadway one, if it was I would have been happy but the level of quality of the scenery was not even tour standard. I sat through the first act with my head in my hands wondering how such a terrible show is being allowed to play to paying West End audiences; I would have walked out in the interval if I wasn't with someone who wanted to watch the second act.