North London News

If you are looking for a festive night out full of fun, laughs and great music, this zany musical would be hard to beat.

Ovation Productions' Christmas show is a handclapping, toe-tapping five-star winner.  It's Macbeth meets Elvis in this Shakespearean tale of greed, ghosts and rock 'n' roll.

Written by Bob Carlton, who also penned the similarly-styled Return To The Forbidden Planet, it's an homage to 1960s pop music, featuring great, great songs by the likes of Presley, The Righteous Brothers, Chuch Berry, The Beatles and Tina Turner, plus many more - from Blue Suede Shoes to Bad Moon Rising.

It's also an hilarious tongue-in-cheek send-up of everything Shakespearean, based very loosely as it is on the Macbeth story but also borrowing lines from many other Shakespearean plays.

Scott Finlay stars as Eric Glamis, a young would-be pop star who would kill to get to the top - and does.  He gets his chance when Terry King, leader and singer of hit group The Coronets, mysteriously dies in an accident on the eve of a big concert.  His wheeler-dealer manager Duke Box is desperate for a replacement and Eric is thrust forward from the backing band into the spotlight - as Thane Cawdor new rock sensation.  But his misdeeds in the pursuit of fame come back to haunt him.

A nine-strong cast of multi-talented young professional actors and actresses really make this show sizzle.  They all sing and play excellently, swapping instruments with amazing versatility.

Outstanding performances come from Kelly O'Leary as Terry King's girlfriend Laura, who gives feisty renditions of He's A Rebel and Leader Of The Pack, and Crouch End actress Charlotte Armer, as Queenie, the exotic jewel in the Coronet's crown and the object of Ereic's desires.  She performs a breathtakingly exquisite version of You've Lost That Loving Feeling.  And her duet with Scott Finlay on River Deep, Mountain High is the showstopper.

If you were brought up on the pop music of this era - as I was - you will simply love this nostalgic show.  If you're of a younger generation come along and see what you missed.  Congratulations to director John Plews on a production that so imaginatively uses its resources.

Upstairs at the Gatehouse already has the valuable support of local patrons from the showbiz world such as Gary Kemp, Jonathan Pryce, Victoria Wood, Sting, Les Dennis and Amanda Holden.  With shows of this quality, it deserves a much wider audience.   

Tony Allcock

Camden New Journal

Following the successful partnership of Shakespeare and rock 'n' roll in Return To The Forbidden Planet, writer Bob Carlton repeats the formula in From A Jack To A King, combining sixties pop classics with an adaptation of Macbeth.

Eric Glamis (Scott Finlay) longs to join the Coronets, backing band to Terry King (Ian Brandon dressed as Elvis).  He believes that this will win him the love of Queenie (Charlotte Armer), the glamorous backing singer.

Queenie, however, won't accept anything less than the star of the show, so together they plot to kill Terry and install Eric in his place.  Terry is despatched with the help of a ghostly spanner, and Eric becomes Thane Cawdor leader of the Coronets.

The story is not really important as the snatches of dialogue last a couple of minutes at most and really only serve to string the songs together.  The cast deliver them with great enthusiasm which was shared by the audience, particularly the children.

CAROLINE MCLAUGHLIN

THEATREWORLD

INTERNET MAGAZINE

 The UK’s Premier Internet Theatre Magazine

Old rockers never die and they don't fade away either.

What they tend to do is find a new format for the songs, attract a younger audience, and rock on.  Years ago, before it was all the rage, I marvelled at a Rock & Roll version of Shakespeare's The Tempest where Miranda kept breaking into "Why Must I Be a Teen-ager in Love".  Wonderful! Since Shakespeare has been out of copyright for a long time, any imaginative writer can have a ball.  From a Jack to a King is a very loose adaptation of Macbeth by Bob Carlton, with a lot of hilarious Shakespearean language and 23 great hits from the 50's and 60's.

Carlton has written a clever book, and Director John Plews, with Musical Director James Compton and Choreographer Racky have coaxed some young and not so young singers to produce excellent cover versions of some of the best of Phil Spector's, Chuck Berry's, Berry Gordy's and others' great hits.  It's the wall of sound on a smaller scale.

The cast of ten work their ways through death songs, "Tell Laura I Love Her", love songs, "To Know Him Is To Love Him", clothes songs, "Blue Suede Shoes", despair songs, "You've Lost That Loving Feeling", rebel songs, "Leader of the Pack" etc, with energy, commitment and good voices.

Everybody watches the back-up singers.  Moving together and always getting back to the microphones at the same time, it's one of the wonders of the modern world.  Charlotte Armer, Kelly O'Leary and Jenny Walters do a good job.  They also get numbers of their own to sing.  Gordon Kenney as "Duke Box", manager of very, very skinny Elvis look alike Ian Brandon, "Terry King", is suitably sexy as the middle-aged Rocker who's seen and done it all.  Scott Finlay is the nerdy guy who wants to get in the band and turns out to be loaded with talent.  Christopher Whitehead, Mark Sangster and Adam Keast sing and play well together as the band.

This is a show for everyone.  It's charming and fun and if you don't like Rock & Roll, well, you're probably too old to be out of doors anyway.

JUDITH STEINER