Roger Foss Let’s face it, ever since Annie Get Your Gun hit Broadway in 1946, everybody knows “there’s no business like show business”. And more than half a century later, from the moment the band strikes up at Brick Lane Music Hall for the opening chords of their non-stop revue-style entertainment celebrating 100 years of Broadway, it’s pretty obvious that there’s no show like they do shows at this unique venue – a gorgeously refurbished Gothic church in Silvertown in London’s East End. This is the business. As the Irving Berlin song goes, "everything about it is appealing" – from the sets, the costumes, the lighting, the singing, the choreography and the staging, to the rib-tickling laughs generated by comedian and Brick Lane Music Hall impresario Vincent Hayes, who links the musical sequences with off-the-cuff routines that literally bring the house down and raise the spirits too. With a cast of five, the show is devised, directed and produced by Ian Adams, who must surely be the multi-tasking maestro of British show biz, because he’s also an immaculate song-and-dance man - his James Cagney-inspired Yankee Doodle Dandy routine is a tap-tastic show-stopper.
But although this is very much a fast-moving ensemble show, each artist shines individually. Bursting with song and personality, Victoria Nicol clearly has the vocal X factor, as does Hettie Gifford, while talented leading lady with a magnetic personality, Julie Paton, is every inch the Broadway and West End star. Adams adds his own touch of glamour when he appears as ZaZa from La Cage aux Folles and launches into the anthemic 'I Am What I Am' as if he really means it. And Hayes also has fun in a frock as one of the nuns from The Sound of Music. With musical director Laurence Payne and drummer Bobby Cook making a two-piece band sound like a big Broadway orchestra, the entire evening’s entertainment (and the five-star food that goes with it) is surely unique in British show business, which is probably why audiences keep turning up by the coach-load for this and similar evenings - there are, for example, wartime and Irish-themed shows and the famous pantomime for grown-ups of all ages is always an absolute hoot.
Roger Foss is a well-known theatre critic and writer who can be |
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Performed on a tiny stage that might just as well be the London Palladium, the production embraces all of those big Broadway numbers that have become pop classics, alongside a few that are not quite so familiar, ending with an A to Z of Broadway musicals that’s so slick the audience’s jaws dropped collectively - it took quite a few seconds to pick them up before everyone in the room could stand up and cheer.
In my theatregoing experience, it’s quite rare these days to see audiences going home with a spring in their heels, as if they’ve been completely rejuvenated. Which is why I reckon one joyful night at Brick Lane Music Hall is better than anything the NHS could offer on prescription. Come to think of it, there really is no business like show business like they do it at Brick Lane Music Hall. I mean, who needs Broadway, or indeed the West End, when we’ve got the National Theatre of the East End transforming Silvertown into the home of solid gold entertainment.