No Jacket Required at The Hawth Crawley Review
No Jacket Required
The Hawth, Crawley
4 February 2017
Reviewed by Amanda Hayes
My husband and I set off for The Hawth in Crawley yesterday to watch the Phil Collins Tribute band, No Jacket Required. We both love both Phil Collins and Genesis’s music so we were really looking forward to it, especially as we had heard good reviews.
All the seats at The Hawth have a really great view of the stage so we knew we were going to be able to see the band perfectly. As we took our seats we could see the stage was full of instruments, two full drum kits, one percussion kit including bongos and a large group of keyboards. On arrival of the band it filled up further with a four-piece brass section, electric and bass guitarist, three female backing vocalists and leading vocalist Dave Whitehouse. The show started strongly with Something Happened on the Way to Heaven with both a brilliant performance from Dave and the brass section. The show continued with a huge selection of Phil Collins hits including some ballads such as Against All Odds, One More Night and Take Me Home, and some more upbeat tracks such as Easy Lover, together with Genesis hits like Turn It On Again, I Can’t Dance and Invisible Touch. The second half started with the incredible In the Air Tonight, the drummer, Graham Goacher was just brilliant, and you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium whilst everyone waited for the first drums to kick in.
My personal favourite, I Missed Again was brought to life by Bill McDonough on Saxophone, Steve Brothwood on Trombone and Nick Trish on Trumpet. And, like most tracks was also backed by both Bill and Steve on percussion. The guys from the band all seemed friendly and genuine and this was demonstrated prior to performing Another Day of Paradise. Dave spoke from the heart when he described how every penny from their merchandise and collecting buckets going to support homeless charity The Bridge.
The evening came to a close with a medley of upbeat crowd pleasers with Sussudio, Don’t Lose my Number, and You Can’t Hurry Love being just a small sample. I hadn’t really considered Phil Collins dancing music but by then the majority of the audience was out of their seats showing their appreciation by dancing and singing. After a standing ovation, the band reappeared disappointingly with tracks neither I nor my husband knew, but they were performed brilliantly so no real complaints there. Our only little bugbear all evening was that one of the female vocalists seemed out of tune and in a few of the tracks the background oohs & aahs didn’t really add anything to the performance. A tiny niggle however that didn’t affect our enjoyment of the evening.
We saw this production at The Hawth in Crawley which is easy to get to and has plenty of free parking. The bar area is comfortable and relaxing and well stocked with both drinks, snacks and high quality ice creams. We had the Honeycomb ice cream and it was delicious. And a standard theatre price of £3.00 per tub.
We have seen a lots of cover bands in our time and although no lead singer will be exactly as the original we considered No Jacket Required to be one of the closest we have seen. So please try and get to see them if you can and remember to take some spare change for the yellow buckets or merchandise, it’s a great charity and every little bit counts.
Rating: 5/5 
No Jacket Required is currently on tour around the UK. For more information and dates tours visit www.nojacketrequired.co.uk.
For other shows at The Hawth in Crawley visit www.parkwoodtheatres.co.uk.
The Hawth, Hawth Avenue, Crawley, Sussex, RH10 6YZ | 01293 553636
