The massive auditorium at the Dominion Theatre at Tottenham Court Road is heaving on this Sunday evening, the last one before the advent season begins. Not that Oxford Street minds: The surrounding buildings and rikshaws are already wearing their Christmas best and have opted in for loud festive tunes.
Now, the Dominion Theatre’s façade has never been a shy one and dominated its West End street corner for decades – remember the massive golden Freddy Mercury statue during the twelve year long We Will Rock You residence? That ended in 2014 when I visited the venue last to see Evita. Since October last year, Elton John‘s musical version of The Devil Wears Prada resides here while on Sundays, (during day time I assume) the Hillsong Church take over.
Tonight is the only London performance of A Fairytale for Christmas, a two hour-plus family-friendly revue of Irish-themed Christmas songs and pop tunes which will tour up and down the country for the next couple of weeks. Set on the backdrop on a bridge in New York‘s Central Park, in front of a festively decorated stall selling Irish drinks four multi-instrumentalist singers and six tap dancers will share shenanigans, Christmas cracker jokes and other anecdotes between traditional and poppy seasonal songs, encouraging sing-alongs and clap-alongs between plastic half-pints of stout. The enthusiastic audience is better dressed-up than your average London theatre goer, and added humorously green Santa hats and the Christmas jumpers from the not-so-ugly shelves.
Expect white-teethed smiles, tap dance and glittery costumes all the way through to the soundtrack of the December hits of Kelly Clarkson, Chris Rea, the Jackson Fives and so on. Of course Mariah is not missing, neither John Lennon, and even Feliz Navidad gets the Irish Christmas treatment by having either flute, banjo and violin added – or all of them. Drums are very present as well. I know most songs but not all. I It has been almost ten years since my last trip to Ireland, and I never visited during the festive season. What would wait for me there?
Banter introduces tonight’s without doubt talented cast as an English singer, a Scottish violinist and all others as Irish – the potential for many good jokes I am hoping for. But maybe this is rather the time to embrace the predictable than to await edginess: The cheeks of the elderly couple in front of me glow throughout the whole evening, their adult children film the finale for them when the lady cannot see because everyone but her has got up and dances – she smiles and drums along with her walking stick. I hope she and her partner get first row tickets for The Choir Of Man from Santa.
I on the other hand feel slightly exhausted. This (dare I say it) disneyfied version of Ireland and its customs is not what I remember having experienced during any of my three trips to the emerald island (maybe fractions of it in some of Dublin’s souvenir shops) but then again, New York’s skyline reminded us all evening that this is not what this show aims to deliver. Do I feel Christmassy? Nah, not yet. Am I in the mood for getting ready for the Christmas season? A bit. Is it my kind of show? Probably not. But everyone else seems to have had an absolute blast of a time and that warms my heart immensely – thank you for having me join. Danny Boy, after this I really fancy an extra cool Guinness.
*** out of 5 stars
A Fairytale For Christmas is a Prestige Production, written and directed by Ged Graham
This season’s tour of A Fairytale For Christmas (there have been four so far) will continue in the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia with over 50 tour stops scheduled
Sadie takes the Stage 