There’s such a thing as too much “feel good.”
📍 Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 TUE 29 MAR TO SAT 02 APR 2022
🕖 Evenings 7.30pm | Matinee Sat 2:30pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 2 hours 40 minutes (with 20 minute interval)
👥 Music: Dan Gillespie Sells
👥 Book: Tom Macrae
👥 Original Idea: Jonathan Butterell
👥 Director: Matt Ryan
💰 From £28.50
🎂 Parental Discretion Advised
🎭 Audio Description: Fri 01 April 7.30PM
🎭 Touch Tours: Fri 01 April 6.30PM
🎭 BSL – Interpreted – Fri 01 April 7.30PM – Iain Hodgetts
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, premiered at the Sheffield Crucible, in 2017, a musical re-imagining of the real Jamie Campbell‘s final weeks in a County Durham high school. Brought to the public’s attention by the 2011 documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, Jamie, out and proud since age 14, was already a representational trailblazer amidst the tight-knit community of the ex-mining village he called home.
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, picks up his story (with some liberal artistic amendments), during one of Miss Hedge’s (Lara Denning) final careers lessons. Played by a star-powered Layton Williams, Jamie New — not McDonald, this is life-pastiche, not biography — has no intentions of being a Forklift truck driver despite his teacher’s urgings. No, our Jamie wants to be a drag queen, a self-truth he’s yet to share with anyone but his superbly supportive mum, Margaret New (Amy Ellen Richardson), and adopted aunt Ray (Sasha Latoya).
Not one to miss a trail to blaze, he will decide to embrace this extension of his identity by attending the end of school Prom, in drag. Along the way he’ll meet mentor Hugo/Loco Chanelle (Rhys Taylor), and have the support of best friend Pritti Pasha (Sharan Phull), as well as the lion’s share of his school contemporaries.
It is of course, wonderful to have a main-stream musical theatre hit (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is resident at the London Apollo, and was recently adapted by Amazon), with LGBTQI+ representation at its beating, tuneful heart. There’s no mistaking the celebratory note from first chord to last, as played by a tight, swinging band under Theo Jamieson, and Ben Atkinson.
Dan Gillespie Sells’ score is generally competent, though the opening number, “And you don’t even know it”, was marred by some poor sound balancing which cast Layton Williams, no musical lightweight, distinctly in the shade. The composition achieves its unquestionable zenith with Margaret’s second act power ballad “He’s my boy”, a number which would likely have charted in Barbara Dickson’s hay-day. Ellen Richardson effortlessly walks away with the vocal honours for the entire show with a powerful, and impassioned rendition.
Fortunately the show has already climbed out of the nadir of the first act’s “Work of Art”, a synth-pop monstrosity intended to embody the mocking hostility of his teacher, and some unspecified fellow pupils. Denning commits to the song, but as with so much of the token antagonism portrayed in the show, it sticks out like a sore thumb, and has absolutely no baring on the action which precedes, or follows it.
Which leads to the book’s absolutely fatal flaw: Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, is essentially 160 minutes of a happy ending. Yes, there are fleeting encounters with Jamie’s gay-hostile father (Cameron Johnson), a rather limp school bully, Dean Paxton (George Sampson), and his teacher’s difference-intolerant attitude, but these play out as blips along Jamie’s inevitable journey to victory. Writer Tom Macrae’s lyrics are snappy, but the plot is desperately in want of a meaningful character arc, and any sense of genuine threat our heroes’ success. Even when he’s very briefly assaulted by faceless, presumably homophobic thugs, this is brushed off and never mentioned again.
There are plenty of laughs, and some grand song & dance, nonetheless, and no member of the cast leaves an ounce of passion or commitment in the dressing room. The world of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, as conceived by Dan Gillespie Sells, is certainly a very lovely one. It would be nice if it were remotely akin to the one we live in.
The finale when it arrives isn’t so much a climax, as the DJ’s last song of the night. It’s fun, but it’s not a journey, and anyone who’s seen Jamie: Drag Queen at 16 knows that the life which inspired the stage-musical, wasn’t without struggle. The village wasn’t wanting for homophobes, and his fellow student’s support for his drag ambitions far from a given. Indeed the real, Jamie Campbell contacted the documentary film crew, in part because he felt their presence would help guarantee his safety.
Nonetheless, the show benefits from strong production values across the board: Designer Anna Fleischle’s set gives epic school-room realness, whilst choreographer Kate Prince has much to be proud of in this well-drilled ensemble. Tour Director, Matt Ryan has a fine ear for comedy, and an admirable feeling for pace.
Which brings us to the finale, which all but demands a standing ovation, and one which will persist through a pop concert worthy, “Out of the Darkness.” It’s not a bad song, but by permitting/encouraging an audience to stand, a show which aims at inclusivity at a stroke excludes anyone with mobility or anxiety issues, or who just didn’t like the show enough to get up. That I can’t tell you anything of the choreography that raised hoots and cheers from those standing, might convey this critic’s perspective.
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is a great crowd-pleaser, just not a great show. It’s good, but the original was better.
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