WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

New musical Why Am I So Single? ran at the Garrick Theatre in London’s West End from 27 August 2024 through 19 January 2025 and this cast recording is a welcome way to remind its audience of its merits until its inevitable triumphant return to the stage.

• Read on for reasons including this is a show with a big heart unafraid to wear it on its sleeve and it’s certainly not goodbye forever

We saw it 4 times including at its penultimate performance where it received a rapturous send-off and it won Best New Musical and Best Performance Of A Song for Disco Ball at our 2024 monstas.

Initially we were interested in it because its writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss had a hit with SIX still running in the West End at the Vaudeville Theatre.

It’s a more grown-up show with better lyrics and songs than its predecessor and focuses on friends, the occasionally non-binary Oliver and Nancy, who is struggling to get over an ex, as they contemplate writing a musical together and decide to focus for subject matter on the lack of love lives.

Best song is Disco Ball as Nancy challenges Oliver to explain who he is behind the mask of someone forever putting on a show. He sings: ‘When you grow up … you’re going to kinda have it instilled into you that queerness is about as embarassing, disgusting, unnatural and immoral and wrong …’

Nancy explains to Oliver in Lost that she’s still grieving after the death of her father. She sings: ‘Grief is searing hot. It’s huge but it makes sense. So it’s almost peaceful. ‘Cause you know it’s just love. Might be inside out but it’s love. Nothing more or less.’

Along the way to these realisations we go on 8 Dates with the hilarious Oliver and both friends contemplate the perils of hook-up apps during Meet Market. As an exclusive, Broadway legend Patti LuPone somehow pops up on this cast recording as a guest on Men R Trash.

Shorn of its visuals there are elements of this soundtrack that don’t work quite as well as others including the blaming of 90s TV show Friends during song I Got Off The Plane for the pair’s problems and the bizarre pre-interval song Interlude Into B Minor.

So why did we fall for this big fancy musical? Marlow and Moss have taken huge leaps artistically despite this not achieving the same level of head-spinning success as its predecessor.

We don’t usually approve of bad language but here it lends its modern but also classic subject matter some authenticity and youthfulness.

It’s a show with a big heart which is unafraid to wear it on its sleeve and it might but au revoir for now but it’s certainly not goodbye forever.

Like Nancy’s jumper, this musical might currently be lost – or in the wash – but knowing that its cast album is out there to wear occasionally makes that more bearable.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Why Am I So Single? Tickets
• Have you seen Why Am I So Single? before and what did you think of this album? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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