I PUT A SPELL ON YOU (Theatre Cafe)****

 

By Emma

Link: https://www.thetheatrecafe.co.uk/livestreams/i-put-a-spell-on-you £10

Available until: 7^th November 2020

The Theatre Café are really spoiling us! Not only do we get a Halloween-themed episode of The Theatre Channel, we get another concert! This is different as it’s more like a concert with individual performances rather than staged scenes but it’s a really enjoyable concert. There are so many different ways of enjoying musical theatre performers and I think it’s important that the online world offers us as many different ways as possible. It helps us to miss it less and the more concerts there are, the more work there is for performers.

Paul Taylor-Mills and Amy Hart are the presenters. They have great costumes and Amy looks absolutely stunning in her leopard print playsuit. And it’s good for Halloween too. If you think about it, leopards are scary! But (I know this sounds really awful) I wish there had been something on the screen to tell you the name of the performer and the song they were singing. I couldn’t always hear clearly. I really don’t want to be writing reviews and getting people’s names wrong. There were some I recognised, but it’s difficult to be sure with Halloween make-up!

I know at least some of the singers did their own make-up and they might have had to provide their own costumes too. The Theatre Café is brilliant but they probably don’t have a big wardrobe backstage. But they all did a really brilliant job. They did their make-up in really inventive ways and it looked creepy sometimes but it looked gorgeous. I always think of make-up as being like art.

There is a great range of songs too. Most of it is from musical theatre, from musicals including Frozen, The Rocky Horror Show, Heathers and Little Shop of Horrors. But there are also pop songs by Britney Spears and the absolute legend that is Beyonce (sung by Louise Dearman, who is the Beyonce of the musical theatre world, whatever she sings, it sounds amazing), music from films… it’s a really good selection.

One of the songs also featured in the Halloween episode of The Theatre Channel but I actually liked that. Aimie Atkinson was obviously brilliant on The Theatre Channel, but I also really liked the way Lizzie Bea sang it, it was completely different. With musicals you get the same productions going on for years and they’re great productions but it means the songs are always done in the same way and it’s good to get a reminder that they don’t always have to be sung in the same way.

There are loads of brilliant singers but three of my favourites are Jodie Steele from Six, Layton Williams from Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Matt Croke, who starred in Aladdin. Jodie does a great job opening the show with a song which we’ve all heard quite a lot but she is exactly the right sort of person to sing the song because she’s just as good whether she’s singing lyrically or belting and she’s also really good at characterisation. I really like her costume too. Matt is also great, he chooses a song which really shows off his voice well and his make-up is so clever.

Layton looks really gorgeous as he always does. I think I’ve seen him wear that dress before but he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care about all that, if he wants to wear it again than he will and I think we should all be like that, it would save us a lot of money. And it suits him so perfectly, it would have been a shame if we only saw him in it once. It’s also really good to see boys in elegant dresses, if you want to go short and leather with stockings that’s great (and Rob Fowler looks great when he does that for his song) but it’s important for boys to know they really can wear whatever dresses they want and they don’t have to have a certain look. If my son wants to wear dresses of any kind that’s fine with me. (Though actually I’ll be glad if he ends up wearing clothes at all, he seems to be going through a stripper phase. He’s so proud of himself for being able to undress without help and he wants to show everyone how clever he is! Maybe it’s a good thing we’re restricted in who’s allowed into the house.)

Layton is a great singer too. His song isn’t a musical theatre song so he gets to put a lot of his personality into it and he sings it gorgeously. He’s the kind of person who can make you feel happy just by being there. Even if he is just on my screen.

There are loads more singers with all kind of great songs. There’s a recent drama school graduate, some incredible blood tear tracks, a song from a film I’m really looking forward to watching, a great song from a musical which had far too short a West End run and a Little Shop of Horrors number with some great dancing. It really is so much fun.