REVIEW | The Wedding Singer, LAOS
The Wedding Singer
LAOS
LAOS
★★★★★
LAOS is a well-established theatre company from Loughborough. They started performing in 1895 and have performed an impressive amount of musicals; both classic and modern. Their latest production is The Wedding Singer; mostly known for the hit movie from 1998 which starred Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. It's a musical full of fun, love and most importantly, 80's vibes!
Time warp back to the year 1985, the year that was dominated by Madonna, Back to the Future, Super Mario Bros and where hair is big, greed was a good thing and the wedding singer was the coolest man in town. We follow Robbie (James Nelson), New Jersey's favourite wedding singer. He's the life of the party until his finance, Linda, leaves him at the altar. He allows his heartbreak to affect every wedding as disastrous as his own. He bumps into Julia (Erica Makin) and he falls madly in love with her. But it's not that easy, she's engaged to a Wall Street big shot named Glen (Cameron Sim).
LAOS has produced a production that delivers on an impressive standard and a fantastic night at the theatre.
Erica Makin is truly sublime as Julia and not only does she have a natural ability to portray the sweet, unassuming and caring character but she has west end qualities in how she delivers the vocals and more emotional numbers. I could feel how many eyes in the audience immediately took a liking to Makin and were with her throughout the entire production.
James Nelson too is impeccable as the leading man, Robbie. His traditional values for love ooze out from his performance, particularly in those moments when he needed to experience challenging moments for this character.
There was a heart stopping moment as we saw these two characters draw towards one another for Grow Old With You and it was one of the most gorgeous moments in theatre I have ever seen performed. I felt the emotion through every note of this number.
Collectively the entire cast of this production deliver a fantastic performance with well timed choreography (Jeanette Patrick – Cooper) and fill the spacious stage that Loughborough Town Hall has to offer. Some of my favourite numbers include Saturday Night in the City, It's Your Wedding Day because of their slick choreography and impressive vocals. The standard of the vocals is a credit to the hard work and commitment behind LAOS. It was an enjoyable production from the very beginning.
Sammy (Oliver Halford) and George (Jack Phillips) provide fantastic accompaniment to Robbie and have fantastic comedic timing. Holly is a very uninhibited and forward character and Gemma Landers does a marvelous job at portraying her feisty character. Her big musical number Saturday Night in the City really showed what a fantastic performer Landers is and I hope to see more from her.
The Wedding Singer is a fun musical with fantastic elements of humor, unforgettable musical numbers and a gorgeous love story at its heart. You will probably want to book Robbie and his band for your wedding day after enjoying the production.
Don't miss LAOS perform The Wedding Singer at Loughborough Town Hall until 14 September. Make sure you head over to the website to book your tickets or to see what future productions they will be putting up!