Movies to Musicals - Cadogan Hall

I wasn’t aware of the Glasgow Philharmonia before they took their flagship production, Movies to Musicals, to Cadogan Hall. Sunday nights in London these days are saturated with musical theatre concerts for something or other, but there’s something about paying £28 (£25 plus £3 venue fees of some kind) instead of, well, considerably more than that. £28, by the way, got me front row of the stalls, a fifteen-strong band, a fifty-six strong cast comprised of teenagers from Glasgow and surrounding environs, many of whom are already ‘triple threats’, plus guest appearances from Dom Simpson, Jacob Fowler and Jenna Innes. Scottish musical theatre concerts are a different experience to what I will call English ones – I’ve been to a few at the Edinburgh Fringe over the years. 

English ones will have a host, or at least a presenter, and there will be a lot of talking, exchanging of pleasantries, and even interviews with guest performers. The host will ask if the audience is having a good time, and will continue to do so periodically. If the audience starts to flag, mostly because it is no longer having a good time because it keeps being asked if it is having a good time, the host will refuse to continue until the response is loud and enthusiastic enough. This results in fake enthusiasm, and is frankly exhausting, and one of the reasons why I don’t want to pay £100 or more to go to such events. Though I might still be tempted by a £15 offer on a seat filling website that I’m not supposed to name (it rhymes with ‘gentle pickets’).

At Movies to Musicals, nobody at all ever asked if we were having a good time. And nobody should, because the performances in themselves were strong enough to ensure we were having a good time. Scottish musical theatre concerts like to get on with it, thunder through the first half, go into the interval, then thunder through the second half. Keep up if you can, and if you can’t, well, that’s your problem. A brief thank you speech from Ross Gunning at curtain call was all that was needed – it was his first time bringing Movies to Musicals to London, and hopefully it won’t be the last.

One has to take the show’s title with several pinches of salt, pepper and whatever the other ‘secret’ herbs and spices are that coat pieces of KFC chicken. Otherwise, you’d be whining about how Dear Evan Hansen was a musical before it was a movie. There isn’t even a movie of The Book of Mormon, at least not at the time of writing. Wicked became two movies. And so on and so forth. That is all besides the point – this is a high octane, high quality musical theatre concert, with zero Andrew Lloyd Webber, though I didn’t realise that until after it was over.

Perhaps inevitably, given who the guest performers were, there were excerpts from Moulin Rouge! The Musical (the reviews editor in me notes that the list of musical numbers in the programme lists that particular show sans exclamation mark) and plenty of material from Heathers. I liked the energy of the show and the enthusiasm of the large cast. Definitely worth every penny.