Review: Everybody's Talking about Jamie

Show information

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Cast and creatives

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Synopsis

Sixteen: the edge of possibility. Time to make your dreams come true.

Jamie New is sixteen and lives on a council estate in Sheffield.

Jamie doesn't quite fit in.

Jamie is terrified about the future.

Jamie is going to be a sensation.

Supported by his brilliant loving mum and surrounded by his friends, Jamie overcomes prejudice, beats the bullies and steps out of the darkness, into the spotlight.

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Background

Parental discretion advised.

Contains some strong language and mild sexual references.

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Everybody's Talking About Jamie: it's not the new Billy Elliot!

Despite what I'm about to say, Jamie is a show worth seeing.

It provides a whole lot of glitter and a whole lot of glam.

It's exciting, it's different, it's a wonderful show.

But it can't be compared to Billy Elliot as so many have tried to do.

This is because Billy Elliot is a musical, through and through.

Comparatively, Dan Gillespie Sells did a great job on the music and I personally see this success that he achieved with Jamie as a sign for amazing things to come, but you can tell he has only just left the pop industry, clear as day.

In most of the great musicals the music has a very subtle change in style.

Each song is an element in telling the story that is there to be told.

The vast 10 minute number of 'Solidarity' was a hard hitting and glorious moment in Billy but simply can't work as a stand alone piece.

It's too long and without the base of the story it carries in leaps and bounds, it has no reason to exist.

On the other hand, Jamie's songs seem to take a very specific moment, takes the emotions, feelings and ideas and turns them into a song.

This is often similar to a pop song that clearly is still part of the way Gillespie Sells' brain works after all the years of work in the industry.

This means that the songs work intuitively as stand alone pieces but they don't carry the performance.

The story isn't advanced by the songs.

Just perhaps a little enhanced which should be achieved anyway.

Then you may ask me, what can you compare Jamie to?

My answer is Bat out Hell the Musical.

Obviously plot, themes and story are incredibly different but purely in terms of the music they share some things.

They are both pop songs that are woven into the fabric of the piece.

They both use music more as a highlight than a plot device.

Annoyingly, at times the songs feel a little too much, too pop-esque.

But just like Jamie, Bat out of Hell is fantastic, an idol for what can be achieved with pre-written music.

Just Jamie sets a new marker for dealing with social issues within a musical that can still feel alive, interest kids and brighten even the best of days.

With the plot it is easy to make comparisons to Billy.

Boy, though bigotry and bullying, finds himself in a wildly different role than is expected of him.

But I don't think we should base our opinion on theatre on loose plot similarities.

If we did every sitcom is the same and every soap identical to the others.

Everything will have its quirks and differences and at the heart of it, that's what Jamie is all about.