Everybody's Talking About Jamie

by Dan Gillespie Sells (music) and Tom MacRae (lyrics)

seen by live streaming from the Apollo Theatre on 5 July 2018

A snazzy musical directed by Jonathan Butterell sees 16-year-old Sheffield schoolboy Jamie New (a wonderfully versatile John McCrea) having dreams of attending his Year 11 school prom in a dress. (The play is inspired by a TV documentary on the same subject). His mother Margaret (Josie Walker) supports him, but is also in peril of living out her own dreams through her son and compensating for her own disappointments - including a disastrous  and short-lived marriage to Janie's father. His closest schoolfriend Pritti Pasha (Lucie Shorthouse) is also supportive, if at times baffled, and really all that clouds his prospects are his own insecurities, his father's disgust, one school bully (Luke Baker) and the ambivalent school teacher Miss Hedge (Tamsin Carroll).

The obstacles are not seriously oppressive, because this is a light-hearted confection basically full of optimism and affirmation. Jamie is openly gay at school; the playground insults are just part of the furniture for the most part, and at a crucial point Pritti delivers a withering put-down to the insecure bully Dean, giving even him the chance for rueful self-awareness and inclusion in the more tolerant ethos of the other students. Jamie's personal demons are more acute, especially as his mother has shielded him rather too protectively from the true extent of his father's disengagement, but even here he has sufficient inner strength to prevail with the help of an unlikely faded drag queen Hugo (Phil Nichol) and the encouragement of friends and family. He accepts with good grace that personal fulfilment should not bleed into self-aggrandisement, and he is so personable that one can onlyenjoy the fact that everybody is talking about him (the title song, opening the second half, is infectiously enjoyable). It's on the whole very sunny.

In the guise of a musical, the whole thing is enjoyable and energetic, with fine singing and dancing from the young cast - John McCrea in the lead role being a particularly shining example - and solid support from the older member of the cast, including a fine song about the joys and pains of maternal love from Josie Walker. The story proceeds fluidly in a multi-purpose set designed by Anna Fleischle which easily moves us from schoolroom to home to streetscape to the city's drag club. After a short sell-out run at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre (allowing a nice joke about being driven by boredom and exasperation to watch snooker) Jamie has transferred to the West End where tickets are now available until next April - an 18-month run which is a mark of its well-deserved success.