This is one of the best reviews I have read. Be sure to click on link and read it all.
SuBo: The Musical - the new stage production and Susan Boyle’s rise to fame analysed
Elaine C Smith who plays the role of Susan Boyle
‘I KNEW there would be snobbery about it,” says Elaine C Smith, of her initial reluctance to become involved in the stage musical of Susan Boyle’s life, and she’s right, on two counts.
Firstly, because the story of Susan Boyle – of the talent show that discovered her, of the people who compete to appear on it, of the millions who watch it, and of the very songs Susan sings – is a story of British popular culture, largely ignored by our cultural and political elites, and often ridiculed when they do notice it.
Secondly, because in a world of theatre where large venues are now often dominated by “tribute musicals” of one kind or another – from the global mega-hit Mamma Mia! to smaller masterpieces like the recent Ian Dury show Reasons To Be Cheerful – there is still widespread snobbery about a genre that is seen as making theatre secondary to other media, either to popular music itself, or to the broadcast and recorded media through which it finds its audience.
Yet a single look at a show like the new Susan Boyle musical I Dreamed A Dream – produced by Qdos pantomimes boss Michael Harrison, written jointly by Smith and Scottish panto genius Alan McHugh, and directed with flair by rising star Ed Curtis – is enough to demonstrate that genre doesn’t necessarily dictate quality. Smith says that she was never interested in a show that would “take the piss” out of Susan Boyle, or present a sugary version of her life; or in one that would just be “sing-a-long-a-Susan” – the music, she felt, would have to express something more than that.
Whatever critics and audiences finally make of I Dreamed A Dream, it’s hard to deny the boldness of the first-person narrative through which it gives Susan Boyle a voice, or its honesty about the tougher aspects of her life; about her dismissal as brain-damaged at birth, the tough economic and social circumstances of her West Lothian home town, the bullying she suffered at school, the limited life imposed on her even by her loving family, and the shocking and brutal coverage – particularly of her physical appearance – she received in the gutter press, following her first
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