This is a non-technical review and views expressed here are my personal opinion only.
The Commitments, currently on show at the Palace Theatre in London West End has attracted a fair bit of attention recently and it is a worthy show to be added to your list of musicals to see.
Overall, the show ran relatively smoothly and was well executed. The passion and the difference in the personality of band members came through well and the cast put on a spectacular performance.
I would like to congratulate the young cast in the show, many of whom have made their West End debut in the Commitments. These include Andrew Linnie, Padraig Dooney and Peter Mooney (as Derek), who all put up some very good performances. Without a doubt, Brian Gilligan's performance as Deco was the star of the show and he was particularly charming. I even shared the annoyance of the other characters felt towards him, which is always a good sign that the character came through to the audience.
However, it is a relatively young musical, and I believe there are problems which can be resolved or ironed out over time. There is a large amount of scenery change and the constant movement of large stage sets was to me, quite distracting. Without technical expertise in this area, it is difficult for me to know what kind of stage setup would be more appropriate. Certainly, in other plays, a rotating stage has been used effectively to minimise the amount of props moved on and off stage to maintain the consistency of environmental layouts and avoid having numerous backstage members to move a large set off. Although a minor issue that can be easily overlooked, at times the dialogue felt stagnant and did not provide enough force to propel the show along until the next song starts.
Joey (played by Anthony Hunt)'s iconic scooter has appeared a number of times throughout the musical (perhaps too much in my opinion) and one can understand why it was used repeatedly. To carve that particular piece of equipment onto Joey's character and perhaps for building up to the finale (I won't spoil this). Nonetheless, the scene where Joey rode into the room with the scooter seemed unnecessary to me and simply adds to the list of things been moved on and off stage.
From the music side of the show, the songs were well done and definitely very enjoyable, especially the finale act, where the cast directly engaged with the audience, which is a wonderful addition to an already brilliant performance. There is a fair amount of spoken dialogues in the musical and from my point of view, the show would benefit from some degree of original musical pieces in place of the spoken conversations.
All in all, well done to the cast of the Commitments, it was a very enjoyable show.
