Reviewed by Julie Hayward
Well what a night! On arrival at The Alexandra theatre in Birmingham, all of the members of the audience were given trademark Buddy Holly specs to wear, we entered the auditorium to music of the era being played.
Instantly we were transported to 1950’s Texas, where Country music was the mainstream music of the day. Harry Boyd, becomes our narrator to guide us through the story. With a simple set and jacket changes he takes on several characters who are important in Buddy’s launch into the music industry. He cleverly makes each one an individual, at times his ‘all American drawl’ lost me but overall the storytelling was good.
The radio station is expecting Country music, but when Buddy Holly and the Crickets launch into their own original sound of rock n roll. They are nearly taken off-air, the onlookers begin to jive and Buddy insists “it’s what the kids want to hear”. Thank goodness he persists I hadn’t realised what a huge influence he made on the music we have today.
The performance of ‘That’ll be the day’ was amazing, A J Jenks who plays Buddy is superb throughout, as are the Crickets; Christopher Weeks, Joe Butcher and Josh Haberfield. All of the vocal and musicians are outstanding. Miguel Angel, who plays Tyrone Jones, performs ‘Reet Petite’ fabulously.
The female performers Cartier Fraser and Sasha Lolita are brilliantly cast as sassy backing singers and they commanded the stage with a great performance of ‘Shout.’
As we move through the story we are treated to more great tunes, it becomes apparent that Buddy was a prolific song writer and perfectionist, I could relate to the unseen character of his mother, worrying about her young son eating properly!
Anyway, we see how Buddy retains his individual look and together with The Crickets and Norman Petty, their manager, they achieve remarkable success. They find themselves on tour in New York at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. As the audience we are cleverly taken both backstage, to see the pre-show nerves as the potential hostile audience could respond to these white boys playing what was then thought of as black music. Then our perspective changes to us being the Harlem spectators who most definitely approved, and we the audience felt we were there when history was made.
Buddy seems to steam through his life at a rapid pace, marrying his wife Maria Elena within hours of meeting her and very quickly she is expecting a baby, this is beautifully portrayed by Hannah Price.
But sadly we know the fateful night of the plane crash is looming, at just 22 Buddy had achieved so much, he died alongside a 17 year old Ritchie Valens, played by Ben Pryer, who we learn tossed a coin for a place on the plane, the pilot and The big Bopper played by Joshua Barton. Both give great performances at the Winter Dance Party. Rhiannon Hopkins plays several roles throughout the night and wowed us with playing the saxophone.
The whole company gave a polished performance and a magical night to remember, we were out of our seats dancing and clapping along to many well-known hits.
Rating: 5/5
Tickets cost from £13 (plus £3.65 transaction fee).
Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story is at The Alexandra in Birmingham from 3-7 March 2020, for more information or to book tickets visit www.atgtickets.com/birmingham or call the box office on 0844 871 3011.
The Alexandra Theatre, Suffolk Queensway, Birmingham, West Midlands, B5 4DS
