Theater News

REVIEW ROUNDUP: David Essex Opens All the Fun of the Fair in the West End

David Essex in All The Fun Of The Fair
(© Paul Mitchell)
David Essex in All The Fun Of The Fair
(© Paul Mitchell)

Pop star David Essex’s self-penned musical All the Fun of the Fair has opened at the Garrick Theatre. Directed by David Gilmore, the production is booking through September 5.

The show’s title comes from Essex’ top-selling 1975 album and is co-written by Jon Conway, telling the story of widower and funfair owner Levi Lee (Essex), who is coming to terms with the loss of his wife, battling the attentions of a newly-divorced woman, and struggling to deal with his rebellious teenage son’s tangled love life. The musical features many of Essex’s hits such as “Winter’s Tale,” “Hold Me Close,” “Gonna Make You a Star,” “Rock On,” and “Silver Dream Machine,” as well as others that Essex and his musical associate Ian Wherry adapted especially for the show.

The company also features Christopher Timothy (Harvey), Louise English (Rosa), Michael Pickering (Jack), Nicola Brazil (Alice), Cameron Jack (Druid), Susan Hallam-Wright (Mary), Chris Holland (Kipper), Kieran Jae (Scotty), Tom Kanavan (Spiv), Tim Newman (Slow Jonny), Robert Rees (Chris), Emily Tierney (Sally), Tricia Adele Turner (Laura), Shona White (Rita), and Danielle York (Maisy).

The creative team includes Ian Westbrook (scenic and costume design), Ben Cracknell (lighting design), and Steve Jonas (sound design).

The critics have begun to weigh in on this jukebox tuner and seem to be charmed by both the show as a whole, and Essex’s return to the stage.

Among the reviews are:

Daily Telegraph
All the Fun of the Fair at the Garrick Theatre, review
“…the show has that essential but often elusive quality for any musical — heart.”

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“David Esssex, with his goatee beard and silver hair, bears little resemblance to the glamorous young star of the early Seventies, and he sends himself up with twinkling irony when delivering the line “I had this long, dark, curly hair once”.

“His voice now has a touchingly vulnerable crack in it, lending an unexpected depth of feeling to even trite lyrics, and he moves with elegant, if now rather languid, aplomb during “Rock On.””

Evening Standard
Fair play to him, David Essex rocks on in this pacy love story
“It is, simply, a cut-price Romeo and Juliet, set in a fairground. With a happy-ish ending. And the still attractive Essex singing “Rock On.””

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“Fair, I kept wanting to say, chin up, my old. We’ve seen far worse than you, so do feel free to finish the tuneful likes of “Winter’s Tale,” “Nightclubbing” and “Silver Dream Machine” at leisure.

“That way, those of us who weren’t old enough for them first time round might even go home humming. Part of the fun of the fair, then, rather than all of it.”

The Independent
All the Fun of the Fair, Garrick Theatre, London
“Essex himself is so laid back as to be virtually horizontal, but he always had something of the Gypsy about him, and the singing voice, though fading, retains enough of its distinctive cracked parchment properties. With librettist Jon Conway, he’s cleverly devised another way of touring his concert show without having to sing everything himself.”

The Times
All the Fun of the Fair at the Garrick, London WC2
“He’s become the sort of gnome you’d happily have in your garden, a benign old bloke who needs only a fishing rod to look more relaxed than he already does.”

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“True, the lyrics are almost as bad as Abba’s in Mamma Mia: “You’re such a pretty thing you made my life begin, you’re such a witty thing you make me live again” — that sort of stuff. And the music has none of the soaring sophistication of Love Never Dies. But you often feel like humming harmlessly along. That’s something, isn’t it?”

The Stage
All the Fun of the Fair
All the Fun of the Fair, named after Essex’s third best-selling album, originally released in 1975, and featuring 20 self-penned songs drawn from it and other albums, is an enjoyably scrappy, over-earnest but likeable new musical.”

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“His career has run on parallel tracks as enduring pop star and theatrical leading man for over four decades, as both worlds collide here, he proves why he has excelled at both.”

Whatsonstage.com
All the Fun of the Fair
“The songs are less wittily strung together than they are in Mamma Mia!, and the fairground setting isn’t as organic a design feature as it is on Coney Island in Love Never Dies, but the stomping simplicity of “Hold Me Close,” for instance, is well mobilized by the cast suddenly emerging on a few dodgem cars, and the rabble-rousing “Gonna Make You a Star” serves the double purpose of reintroducing the Wall of Death into the fairground and transforming the twitchy retard on the rifle range.”

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“But in its own honest, rather stilted way, the show has a beguiling melodramatic charm, and Essex as Levi Lee, the boss in a pork pie hat and tightly packed jeans, has several poignant moments of mock vanity when he admits that the older he gets, the better he was.”