Reviewer: John Roberts
It has been good over the last few weeks to see Brian Conley back on prime time television as part of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Take Away. Brian has always been a consummate performer being able to entertain both children and adults alike with his traditional blend of comedy and musical entertainment.
I remember as a 14 year old making sure I was always home on a Saturday evening by 7pm just in time for the Brian Conley show, and it was with this same excitement that one looked forward to this new evening of light entertainment which is currently on the first legs of it's tour (in fact the Worthing date was the first performance.)
Unfortunately the show in its current format just doesn't work, it is scattered with various supporting artists who were not as talented as one would hope to see in a production, the pace of the production loses all momentum and to ones disappointment any factor of being entertained, there really is only so many times you can see a ventriloquist joke about fart gags, or for singers to be inaudible one moment then ear shatteringly loud the next, which to this reviewer is quite frankly inexcusable, and as for the dancers (who are fantastically easy on the eyes,) their choreography though was less easy and shockingly messy.
The only saving grace was Brian himself, who throughout this production had the audience eating out of his hands, with guest appearances from Dangerous Brian, Nick Frisbee and of course Larry the Loafer kept the audience laughing throughout, but Brian isn't just a comic he is a fantastic singer and performances from his Olivier Award winning performance as Al Johnson really brought the house down, It's a pity we didn't get any songs from his recent stage persona Professor Harold Hill from the Music Man.
The clue to making this show is in its title, The Best of Brian Conley, if this had been strictly kept too the audience would have 90minutes to 2 hours of pure entertainment (which is worth seeing) without having the added extra of an hour of substandard cabaret.
For information in the tour click here
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