Sheffield’s musical adaptation of the 1963 Cliff Richard hit film “radiates enough rays of feel-good energy to leave you with a tan”, said Matt Barton on The Stage.
The story follows a group of friends who take a road trip across Europe in a double-decker bus. The gang travel through France, Switzerland and Italy towards their final destination of Greece, picking up a pop group and a mysterious American singer along the way.
But beyond the “globetrotting destinations”, it’s about the journey, which “provides a vehicle for Richard’s easy-going hits”. They beam with “warm familiarity”. The audience is kept in a “gentle sway, while pops of colour burst out of the sepia set and the boys step out of their boiler suits to strut around in stripy shirts”.
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Amanda Stoodley’s costumes are “fabulously colourful, heightening the feel-good fun factor”, said Jacob Bush on The Reviews Hub. “The 1960s aesthetic is perfectly captured while somehow still feeling fresh.” Though the structure of the bus is “mainly left to the imagination”, it is “impressive to see a full-size Mini and scooter on stage”.
Directors Elizabeth Newman and Ben Occhipinti ensure the show is “packed with hits” and delivers an “irresistibly feel-good evening" in Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, said Mark Brown in The Telegraph. Versions of the show were staged in 2018 and 2019, but Michael Gyngell and Mark Haddigan’s adaptation adds a “twist” by moving the opening scenes of the “charming” journey from London to Sheffield.
The cast is undoubtedly “talented”, but George Jones as the “fine-voiced, charismatic Don is a standout”. In fact, “he gives an even more likeable and magnetic performance than Sir Cliff himself”. The score is “crowd-pleasing” and boasts many of Richard’s well-known songs, including “Bachelor Boy”, “The Young Ones”, “On the Beach” and, of course, the title number.
It is an “immensely good-humoured and infectious show”, said Ron Simpson on WhatsOnStage. Opposite Jones, Fanta Barrie has a “standout turn” morphing from “glamorous singer to urchin boy to Don’s ever-graceful bride”. There was, however, one problem that the Crucible “could do nothing about”: singing the title number with the lyrics “We’re going where the sun shines brightly” to an audience “gasping in the current heatwave!”
The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield until 18 July, then Blackpool Grand Theatre
