What a bizarre hour of my life was spent watching this musical - bizarre, but not wholly unpleasant. This piece of new writing is at its core a light-hearted and old-fashioned romantic comedy, but the inconsistency of performances and a bit of a messy structure stop this being the thorough crowd-pleaser it wants to be. Opening with a Sex and the City style number about the struggles in the search for love when men are oh! such a bother, the musical follows a pretty simple story of finding romance in unexpected places, with the usual mishaps and misfirings on the way. There’s an amusing, if somewhat simply drawn, contrast between a sweet-but-strong English woman and her feisty-but-heartbroken Spanish counterpart. In places, the play does manage to be genuinely funny and endearing, but frequently the writing strays into the tired old clichés of women seeking after the right man to sweep them off their feet. When Emma, the lead in both the production and the musical within it, says ‘I want the best for the show too, but most of all I want you to approve of me’, it feels an unlikely statement for a female adult professional. And in any case, it takes her likeability levels right down to see her suddenly acting the ‘little woman’ when she’s been quite feisty before. Across the cast, acting and singing varies wildly, but they somehow manage to bring it all together for a fairly enjoyable sing-along end. However, with a large body of non-native speakers from Spain (where the action is set), diction can really damage some of the better songs and moments by simply making them incomprehensible. Though some parts of this play made me blink in disbelief (I won’t even get started on the George Clooney masks), it’s hardly offensive, and it’s often pretty fun.

Reviewer:
Ashleigh Wheeler

Ashleigh Wheeler has written 17 reviews for Broadway Baby since joining the team in 2011.