Pretty Woman The Musical At The Curve Theatre Leicester
DISCLOSURE – TICKETS TO SEE THE SHOW WERE GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER AND GUEST FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW
Reviewed by LW
Curve Theatre is in the centre of Leicester. The venue is fully accessible and is surrounded by several independent places to eat and drink along with plenty of parking, including a multi-story right next door.
It’s hard to believe that it is 25 years since we saw Julia Roberts epitomise prostitute Vivian, and charm multi-millionaire Edward Lewis played by Richard Gere. The story is now on tour with Amber Davies and Oliver Savile stepping in to these roles. We also enjoy Ore Oduba in several roles, including hotel manager Mr Thompson and joyously popping up as a conductor for a night at the opera.
For those new to the story, it starts with Vivian and friend Kit working the streets of LA trying to earn enough to pay the rent. She meets Edward who is immediately charmed by her and offers to pay her initially for the night but later for six days. I’m sure it won’t be too much of a spoiler to learn that we then see the inevitable boy meets girls story unfolds.
The opening number, I felt, didn’t really hit in the way you would hope a big musical would, however, this was soon forgotten as we see the streets of LA and we are introduced to our key characters and the story begins.
Amber Davies gave a good performance as Vivian, and certainly has all of the credentials to be a musical theatre performer. Her performance, whilst good, didn’t really evoke the emotions of the audience and we didn’t feel the affinity with her that such a character deserves. There were moments her accent was a little strange and we missed the creation of the depth of our heroine. (This could have been in part to my being utterly distracted by her wig which was twice the size of her head)
Oliver Savile gave a fine performance as Edward, and I enjoyed his solos. Again, I think some of the depth of the character was missing and I didn’t feel I could champion Edward to get his girl at the end in the way I have done at other shows.
Ore Oduba brings all the joy to his roles offering some sterling moments of comic relief, his facial expressions at every turn are fantastic. However, my absolute highlight of a performance has to go to Noah Harrison as bell boy Giulio – hapless and hilarious, it’s worth going just to see him!
The ending seemed to occur very quickly, quite possibly as I wasn’t feeling the empathy with the characters, but we all love a ‘happily, ever after’ and that is what we got. Along with a joyous finale with the audience on their feet singing along.
In all, we had a good night out, it wasn’t the best show I, nor my friend have ever seen but it was a feel-good show which is definitely worth a few hours of an evening!
Rating: 3.5
Pretty Woman is at Curve Theatre until Saturday 21st September
https://www.curveonline.co.uk/whats-on/shows/pretty-woman/
Box Office — 0116 242 3595 — tickets@curvetheatre.co.uk
BSL Interpreted performance is Wednesday 18th September at 7:30pm
Audio Described on Thursday 19th September at 7:30pm
Caption performance Saturday 21st September at 2:30pm