REVIEW | Catfish The Musical in Concert

Catfish The Musical in Concert

★★★★1/2

There is absolutely space for new musicals to emerge through the industry and Catfish The Musical is doing just that.

This new musical was created by the creative manager of the Musical Theatre Appreciation Society, Willy Mukendi, and composer Joseph Purdue. The two initial strangers created and composed the musical, entirely over the internet. Willy and Joseph only met for the first time on the day of the album rehearsal. The concert version, which was performed for one-night only in September at Turbine On The Jetty festival. It was Paul Taylor-Mills who helped to produce the original concert with a cast of rising stars, giving a platform to the future of West End right in front of our eyes.

The new musical has received tons of support since and even in lockdown, the concept album was released. 17 West End stars, including Alice Fearn, Luke Bayer, Millie O’Connell and Maiya Quansah-Reed united digitally to bring Catfish The Musical‘s music to life.

Catfish The Musical is a dark comedy which deals with the themes of social media and online dating; putting a spotlight on issues facing young people of today. The story follows the lives of four millennials DD, Alex, Will and Jackson. After Jackson is convinced to join a new dating app, where profile photos are anonymous and names are secreted he is instantly matched to the extroverted, out and proud, lesbian Jessica. He soon realises Jessica believes him to be a girl, confirmed by a mistake on his profiles gender setting. He has the power to clear up his honest mistake or play a game…

This musical is certainly making ripples with its soundtrack. It’s impressive with Love is Love leaving me with goosebumps. The harmonies in the music throughout this show are sublime and have been perfectly crafted together for effect.

The cast do an amazing job at taking on the challenge of a new musical and bringing the concept to live in concert style. Hats off to Harry Simpson, Emily Badger, Georgia Jade, Jamie O’Leary, Olivia Hallett, Joseph Riley, Jackie Pulford, Zac Hanlon and Joseph Dennington for bringing the lead characters to life in such a different way creatively. They showed us how performing arts individuals are adapting to new ways of carving their careers in uncertain times. Are you watching Rishi Sunak?

Catfish The Musical enables us as an audience challenge our own behaviour on social media and an insert of Willy and Joseph discussing this story enables us to reflect on that. Especially in these uncertain times, our behaviour towards strangers on the internet is more important as ever.

Of course the concert style doesn’t bring with it the set, the big musical dance numbers but there were inserts of choreography within this production so not all is lost. I definitely adding the other layers that theatre gives us would make this a gorgeous show, it has scope for a larger scale in the future.

You can find further information on future news on Catfish The Musical by heading over to their Facebook page.