Produced by SISCO Entertainment, The Barricade Boys stars past performers from Les Miserables whether it be film, West End, or tour. Birthed by Scott Garnham and Simon Schofield, this production, amongst other iterations of the same theme, stages a heterogeneous spread of songs from the West End, just about the legal amount of Les Mis songs, and every other performance genre and decade abound.
The Brindley, Runcorn was the venue and sadly only had about a 70% occupancy, a shame for a small house and a decent show. Had I written this revue after the first ten minutes, it would take a completely different tone, but I came out of the first act energised and thoroughly enjoying the production and the end even more so. I couldn’t quite cope with the first run of three songs being ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, Stealer Wheeler’s ‘Stuck in the Middle’ then straight into an unsolicited Blues Brothers’ medley… I can’t speak for the rest of the Runcorn audience but I wasn’t ready for that; as a rule-of-thumb, I’m never ready for the third song in any performance to be a medley!
Eclectic to say the least, and bordering on incongruous, Act One covered Pop, Rock, Opera and Musical Theatre spliced by tenuous segues into the boys talking about their careers, but let’s be honest, that’s what the audience wanted. The boys are talented, with jewelled performance credits, they owned the stage and really put on a show. They are professional, committed, and unbelievably well-rehearsed, almost to the point of cliché, and even though it was a little chintzy, was great fun! I feel like the show’s success hinged massively on the venue, and though the Brindley is a great little theatre, didn’t have the same feel as the performances they talked about like on the Queen Mary 2. I understand that they do play too with a live band, but some of the backing tracks used this evening weren’t fantastic to say the least. I got excited by the first couple of bars of music as it seemed it was an identical sample of the film opening backing but we quickly slipped into the realm of electronically produced backing tracks. I have seen a similar production, Beyond The Barricades, a few times and their addition of female performers and, albeit a small one, band, makes all the difference and I wish I'd experienced the pure talent these boys had, underscored by some instruments.
Now to the boys themselves, Scott Garnham, having trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, was great, and added real energy to the stage, with credits from all over the West End and countless tours he was fantastic. Simon Schofeild, the co-creator with Scott, was equally superb. He put everything into this show and it made it the great piece it was. His seminal credit is his portrayal of Frankie Valli in New Jersey Nights UK Tour, and it was no surprise, his falsetto was superb and gave richness to the harmonies. I must admit, and I hate myself for saying this, the best material during the whole show was the Jersey Boys medley. Their voices suited it so well, and it was the closest I felt to the West End all night. I’m not sure if these boys are in the SISCO Jersey Boys show but they could be! Keiran Brown was by far my favourite performer. An incredible tone to his voice, he really added maturity and class to the quad. His section in ‘Bring Him Home’ was superb and I felt a real likeness to Colm Wilkinson, which has to be the ultimate compliment to a man in this craft and show. I’ll be blunt, he probably should have had that as a solo, outside of the Anniversary Tour, this song should be rich in isolation, and as talented as Simon was, he shouldn’t have opened that song. Lastly, Dougie Carter, alumni of Mountview, was great. He almost relaxed the overall performance as he was a little less serious which I liked and had great rapport with the others. Overall their performances were fantastic even if I would have changed the repertoire. The harmonies were clean as a whistle but I think they were placed in songs that didn’t benefit from a four-part split and the intervals were very similar regardless of song or style and this could have been a little more varied.
In terms of the visual and audial experience technically, the sound mix was sometimes terrible and the backing tracks were often way too loud, and poorly balanced with the microphones but didn’t seem to distract too much. One element of the show that was unforgivable was the lighting. As somebody that teaches tech myself, I find it quickly irks me but this show possibly more than ever. It was completely and utterly over produced, but ironically with very little lighting, and lights were being stretched to create atmospheres they simply couldn’t. Some songs had upwards of 30 lighting changes and it was just a mess of moving heads with bad gobos flicking around and making real bathos with their effect. I think it would have worked much better had the rig been higher but the effects were poor, and the follow spot operator struggled with one of the most pedestrian performances I’ve seen in terms of movement, it was four mics and four men.
I’m sure the last paragraph was unnoticed by the Brindley Audience, but one must judge it on its merit.
Reviewer - Nick Hill
on - 22/3/19
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