By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Monday 29 January, runs through 3 February 2024, touring the UK until 11 May 2024 RUNTIME: 135 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

‘The wedding’s off but the honeymoon is on!’ runs the tagline for this fun Stock Aitken Waterman musical and, plot-wise, there’s very little else you need to know.

• Read on for reasons including why this production has West End legs and a hen-do feel

We’re in Mamma Mia meets The Play That Goes Wrong territory and your view of this jukebox musical which also contains Bananarama’s Venus cover will depend on your feelings about the 80s S-A-W Hit Factory and we were lucky, lucky, lucky to have been massive fans.

Biggest star Kylie even appears as a magic mirror effect here at points in the show to encourage our jilted bride heroine Ella, a fine-voiced Lucie Mae-Sumner, to channel her inner diva and ‘pop princess’.

What S-A-W songs did so well was piggyback the Hi-NRG sound popular in 80s gay clubs, marry them with a lyric usually about unrequited love, make ups or break ups and front them with a talented, relatable young star.

Here Debbie Isitt, creator of the successful Nativity films, gives us the ridiculous story of a bride jilted at the altar for an initially unknown reason who decides to go on the Turkish honeymoon, is joined by a gaggle of family and friends who try to cheer her up and is pursued by the groom who wants to change his mind.

As with the recent Cruel Intentions: The 90s Musical, there’s real pleasure to be had in hearing nostalgic and beloved songs performed well by a musical theatre cast and because the songs predominantly share the same authors here there is a coherence to this work that Intentions lacks.

The opening number in the church mashes up the smashes including I Should Be So Lucky, Too Many Broken Hearts and Together Forever and meshes so well you can really feel that this complicated show with a large cast has been on a regional tour with it since November with several months still to run.

Our favourite numbers included the re-imagined gay and older woman romance of Sinitta’s Toy Boy starring Scott Paige (Eurobeat and Eugenius, Other Palace) and Melissa Jacques (Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Apollo Theatre).

Also Hazell Dean’s early S-A-W hit Whatever I Do is given a particularly stormy rendition which suits its brasher beats well.

And who also could resist a Mel and Kim medley featuring Respectable, Showing Out and That’s The Way It Is centred on a night out on the town?

But it’s the heartstring-tugging You’ll Never Stop Me Loving You by bridesmaid Bonnie played by Kayla Carter and sung to a best man given cheeky life by Giovanni Spano that moved us most.

We were in the front row of our venue and it would be fair to say that it went down an absolute storm despite the ridiculous plot and we think it has West End legs and is ideal for hen-dos and obviously a gay audience.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy I Should Be So Lucky
• Have you seen I Should Be So Lucky before and are what did you think of these SAW songs? Tickets
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