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Review Fame! We're going to live forever

By The Bristol Post | May 29, 2014

FAME was an iconic piece of 1980s television – its 136 episodes following a successul film, and it was equally successful when as Fame the Musical, it hit the stage later in that decade.

Now under the leadership of director/choreographer Gary Lloyd, and updated to 2014 for its 25th anniversary, the show still crackles and explodes with the same high-octane excitement that it did when it first appeared.

The story, full of the burning ambition, heartbreak and triumphs of a new intake at New York's School for the Performing Arts, has seen the music and dance routines rearranged to fit today's, not yesterday's generation.

On the way it has become a little more serious, with the storyline and characters less clear, sacrificed on the altars of speed, energy and excitement.

When this young company attacked a production number, with Alex Thomas as Tyrone producing some unbelievable dance steps, so many sparks flew you would think they had just been plugged into the national electricity grid.

It would have been nice if sound man Don Samson had held back a little on the echo effect allowing Jodie Steele, full of pent-up emotion as the tragic Carmen Diaz, Sarah Harlington's lovesick Serena Katz, and Hermione Lynch's highly committed dance teacher to show more individual effects in the climax of their numbers, in the same way that Landi Oshinowo, a lovely sincere Miss Sherman, did with her more controlled solo vocal.

But it is not those thoughts you will come away with – more the feeling of having been mown down by a burst of energy from a young company who were determined to take no prisoners as they displayed their talents.

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