Strictly Ballroom Prodcution Photos 2023 taken on 24th March 2023 in Southend

Strictly Ballroom: The Musical – Bord Gais Energy Theatre – Review
by Frank L.

Dates: 29 May – 03 June 2023
Produced by Phil McIntyre Entertainments
Book by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce adapted by Terry Johnson.

The film “Strictly Ballroom” took the world by storm in 1992, and became almost instantaneously a cult movie and spawned the mega-successful Strictly Come Dancing competition on the BBC. Another spin-off is this musical which premiered in Sydney’s Lyric Theatre in 2014. This production by Phil McIntyre Entertainments is currently touring the UK and Ireland.

Scott Hastings (Kevin Clifton), was born into a ballroom dancing obsessed family. He comes across Fran (Faye Brooks), from a paternalistic Spanish family. She wants to enter the world of ballroom dancing competitions, but she is not qualified to do so as she is only a beginner. You are immediately launched into a familiar world of two very different clans who do not understand each other and two star-crossed lovers. There is more than a hint of “Romeo and Juliet”, as the two inevitably become intertwined, thankfully without suffering the same fate as the protagonists in Shakespeare’s play!

The set is like the inside of a large onion but instead, it is a glitter ball with the accompanying surface glamour of ballroom dancing. The cast arrives on stage in couples, the women in suitably voluminous, garish dresses and the men in white ties and tails, with numbers on their backs, as they waltz around in competition. That does not last long as they transform into more zany and less formal attire. The various acts which follow are full of well-drilled dance routines as the competition-obsessed Shirley Hastings (Nikki Belsher), proprietor of a dance studio, focuses on the upcoming Pan-Pacific Grand Prix Dancing Championship. It is the centre point of her world and the storyline eventually reveals why. She longs for her beloved son, Scott, to win the top prize!

There are all sorts of references back to the original film including the songs “Time After Time”, “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” and “Love is in the Air”. The costumes are splendidly just that little bit over the top. It all adds to the tawdry glamour of it. However, the new songs are less satisfying, not because of any failing on the singer’s part, but because the songs themselves were less than memorable.

The story is helped along by Barry Fife (Gary Davis), the world head of the Pan-Pacific, Les Kendall (Quinn Patrick), Shirley’s right hand at the dance studio and her unfortunate husband Doug Hastings (Mark Sangster) who has given up a long time ago. Ken, (Benjamin Harrold) is a dancer whose career has passed its peak but he is still going despite his problems with the bottle!

At the start of the production, it was difficult to hear precisely what the characters were saying and annoyingly on stage left, from where I was seated, there was a small gap between the entrance curtains so that a light could be seen constantly and also occasionally glimpses of someone moving in the wings. A small thing but it felt sloppy for a production of this size.

That said, this was a fun night and the last scene before the interval and again the final scene were both show-stoppers. It brought back happy memories of the film from thirty years ago. It is an entertaining night and the dancing, which is central to it, is a joy.