Performance: Broadway Showstoppers

The Civic

Reviewer: Bernadette Rae


Two things have to be made quite clear about this. One, the subject might be Broadway but this grossly garish little production is far more Las Vegas than New York - think casino entertainment, tourist package, ersatz. And two, they never stop.

The first is not really a plus. It is highly artificial and as nauseous as neon. The two opening medleys barely give more than a line of a tune before riffing off into another, and another, and another.

Five minutes into the proceedings and you have covered about 26 famous numbers. It is frustrating and dizzying and, like the whole of Broadway Showstoppers, it touches base with the old musical masterpieces but completely misses their poetry, their soul, a fairly serious miscalculation when you consider that Broadway's heart is, by nature, an unsubtle affair pinned prominently on its spotlit sleeve.

During that same space of time you've also made close, graphic and frequent acquaintance with the g-stringed rumps of the Mistinguett dancers.

Sorry Mistinguett, but bare bums might be momentarily interesting but make poor cover for this level of choreographic cliche.

The singing is another over-processed and high-decibel shock which looks and sounds suspiciously like a tape and mime job.

But all of these criticisms (and a few more besides - its boring structure, dazzlingly uninspired lighting and a complete lack of variation in pace, to mention but a few) cannot take away from the energy and stamina of what is a tiny cast for the marathon task.

There are just 10 of them and the logistics of what they do is nothing short of miraculous. All that high kicking, intense smiling and multiple wig-changing - and they are singing for real, as well? I'd say it was impossible!