Words by Hayley Minn
When you think of a Coronation Street musical, you either think 'Why have they made a musical of something that was awful in the first place?', if you're a really boring person who doesn't like having fun, or 'That sounds like the best idea ever!', if you're a huge Corrie fan, like I am.
The northern working-class drama created by Tony Warren in 1960 is a soap opera filled with depressing storylines, high dr ama and comedy dropped in in the form of Norris and all the other oldies. However, this stage version, written and composed by Trisha Ward, while still funny and with all the feel of the soap it originated from, it didn't stand up as a musical in its own right.
The show, with a cast of 37, and a set of an 80ft-wide mock-up Str eet, with the 25-piece orchestra playing on its rooftops, is set up for arenas rather than theatres, which made it feel less personal and less like a musical. Above them is a screen running the full width of the stage, on which clips from the TV programme are shown in the middle, coinciding with the actors singing and dancing out the same scenes below. While this was a help, especially for the youngsters in the audience, like me, who wouldn't have known who the people were in the earlier episodes, it was also a hindrance, as my eyes were frequently drawn towards that, rather than what was happening on stage.Television presenter Paul O'Grady is the Narrator leading us through the show's half century, transported back in time by Katy Ca vanagh - who plays Julie in Corrie - as the Angel of Death. O'Grady was hilarious throughout, and at one point, he tells Martha Longhurst, who was the first character to die in the soap: "You've been written out, love."
The use of time travel meant that the stage show just hopped from one scene to another, at random. For example, you see Richard Hillman (Brian Capron), among other Corrie guest stars belt out a big number and then he is never seen again after this until the final song, where Russell Watson made an appearance.
While this mechanism of having random Corrie stars pop up and sing a song seemed quite a lazy way of shoehorning in as many Corrie storylines as possible, these songs were pretty epic, especially Richard Hillman's song 'Norman Bates with a Briefcase', which was accompanied by dancers dressed as Richard Hillman and clips of the serial murder storyline on the screen, it. Another highlight was 'I know Hot It Feels', a duet by old Elsie Tanner, played by Jodie Prenger, and young Elsie Tanner, played by Kym Marsh, whose fiance, Jamie Lomas (Warren from Hollyoaks ), I spotted in the audience, there to support her. There was also the brief, but incredible, appearance of Julie Goodyear as Bet Lynch, who, at the age of 70, still has an amazing voice.While I didn't know most of the people in the first act, being one of the youngest in the audience, I still thought the show was really good, and, while the narrative wasn't exactly clever, the comedic value, nostalgia and the big numbers definitely outweighed that.
