Review by Lauren at De Montfort Hall in Leicester
Tickets were gifted in return for an honest review.
Sing The Musicals is a mass sing-along to iconic tracks of the best-known movie musicals, complete with a live band and incredible vocals. A full house ready to forget inhibitions on a Friday night, combined with the glorious acoustics of De Montfort Hall (a concert hall through and through!) with exciting lighting effects gave the show all the intensity of a rock concert.
The theatrics started off strong in the opening; a silhouetted figure (Josh Taylor, lead vocalist/keys) centre stage wearing PT Barnum’s Ringmaster costume, posing with the cane like Hugh Jackman in the movie, haze building and lights pulsing in time with the opening bars of ‘The Greatest Show’. When the chorus kicked in and the lights came up on the rest of the band, the first thing that grabbed me was the costumes; each band member was dressed in a costume from a signature musical. With Josh Taylor as ‘The Ringmaster’, we also had Lara de Belder (lead vocalist/keys) as ‘The Dancing Queen’, Ben Cullingworth (drums) as ‘The French Revolutionary’, Io Kaloudi (bass/vocals) as ‘Chicago Town’s Cabaret Performer’ and Laurence Owen (guitar/vocals) as ‘The Founding Father’. I found this a really fun detail of the show, it set the tone of the evening and was a great visual.
Following the opening, the tracks just kept coming with a super-fuelled momentum, hit after hit after dance number after ballad, interspersed by the back catalogue of Walt Disney (making me wish I’d done some vocal warm ups!). We even encouraged to get up and dance, and there was no keeping the Leicester audience in their chairs!
Whilst the atmosphere was electric, and Lara de Belder’s vocal stamina is seriously impressive (‘Defying Gravity’ immediately into ‘You Can’t Stop The Beat’ was jaw-dropping!), songs did come in somewhat a confusing order, as commented on by fellow audience members. Most songs were grouped, for example there was an Andrew Lloyd Webber set featuring the go-to hits from Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Evita, and the opening chords of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ (but not the rest of the song?), whereas some of the groups (for example Hamilton leading straight into Annie) seemed a little random.
Now, it is worth noting that this was strictly a sing-along to movie musicals (with the exception of two musicals featured). The reason for this being that above the band was a large screen playing the corresponding scene clips to each song. While initially I was a little disappointed (I was expecting to hear some kosher stage musical tracks), this made the show very family friendly by allowing younger audience members to easily connect and for older audience members to feel nostalgic. It is also worth noting that these were all clean tracks, parents. No swearing or precarious topics (which ruled out the likes of Rent and Heathers.) The movie clips had the lyrics superimposed over the top, making the singing along part easily accessible to those able to see the screen clearly. The slight problem with having the movie clips up, however, was that the band on stage were playing some of the songs faster than the original tracks, or starting the song after the clip had started, meaning the music was out of time with the actors’ mouths on screen. This became quite jarring.
The movie clips element also wasn’t consistent, which I did find disappointing. For example, during the Mamma Mia set, the videos behind the lyrics were of Abba, and the lyrics displayed were the original Abba lyrics, which as any Mamma Mia fans know, do differ slightly in the musical. At this point we were almost just doing mass-karaoke on YouTube, the musical theatre performance element forgotten. Nevertheless, I did belt my heart out! The same can be said for the encore, but I won’t spoil that as it was a fantastic ending.
The only number in Act 1 without a video accompaniment was ‘Defying Gravity’, an obvious choice for any musical theatre event; the audience knew what was coming when Lara de Belder paused under green strobe lights and produced a pointed black witch’s hat. As she let this image take effect during the introductory notes of the song, the dramatization and theatrics of the moment kept everyone enraptured by her performance through the number, we were focused on her, and only her (unless of course, you needed to follow the lyrics!). I much preferred this style of staging to watching movie clips, as it was truer to the stage show of Wicked and much more creative. The Les Misérables inspired opening to Act 2 was equally as riveting, and the band built expectations of a similar performance for ‘All That Jazz’ starring their ‘Chicago Town Cabaret Performer’. However, we were surprised when Io Kaloudi took centre stage looking Fosse-ready with a bowler hat, and then Lara de Belder stepped forwards to sing, with Kaloudi neither singing or dancing. I felt they’d really missed a trick here.
Overall, the tracklist covered a wide range of movie musical tracks with something for everyone, including the usual suspects such as ‘The Time Warp’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ from The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Footloose’ from Footloose, with Disney classics such as ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight’ from The Lion King. There were some less-predictable choices in there too, including ‘You Give a Little Love’ from Bugsy Malone and ‘Oom-Pah-Pah’ from Oliver. Whilst I enjoyed watching and listening to every band member, Lara de Belder truly stole the show with a limitless voice and infectious energy.
Some more food for thought, was the question of, ‘are they being the characters in the songs, or are they just singing the songs?’. This stood out as an important question in numbers such as ‘You Can’t Stop the Beat’ from Hairspray, ‘I Will Always Love You’ from The Bodyguard and ‘A Whole New World’ from Aladdin. Characters such as Seaweed, Rachel Marron, Aladdin and Jasmine should all be portrayed by performers of the correct ethnicity, and none of those ethnicities were on stage for this performance. Maybe the inclusion of these numbers should be re-thought, especially since theatre has been slowly moving towards improving inclusion and anti-racism in recent years.
To conclude, Sing The Musicals is a production that I imagine would do well at holiday parks, and on cruise ships, where it would capture the huge range of ages destined to enjoy the show. If you have musical loving children, it could make for an excellent birthday outing, or for a great night out for musical-loving adults of any age, although to my fellow musical theatre fans who take the art very seriously, I urge you to enjoy this show for what it is; a light-hearted, feel-good night out featuring some brilliant musicians and some of your favourite songs. I promise you, you will leave smiling!
Sing The Musicals tours with dates throughout 2026. For dates and venues visit https://www.massaoke.com/singthemusicals
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