Keith Jack entered the Hippodrome Casino stage on Friday night singing a Scottish medley and wearing a kilt. He then announced that the evening would be of traditional Scottish songs which received some worried looks from people in the audience. Luckily, this was a joke and Keith went on to perform some classic musical theatre numbers in front of an audience that seemed to be predominantly made up of supportive family and friends.
The night was split in to two acts. The first being of songs that remind Keith of this childhood and the second act of songs that represent who he is today.
Act one was a rather gloomy affair, with stories of death and domestic violence and songs like ‘Why God, Why’ from Miss Saigon, ‘Bring Him Home’ from Les Miserables and ‘This Is The Moment’ from Jekyll and Hyde. There was some comedy relief when Keith sang Queens ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and reminisced over how it was one of the songs her performed on the TV show ‘Any Dream Will Do’ (where he came second to Lee Mead to play the role of Joseph, something he did later go on to do).
Act two picked up and became a little more cheery. Helped out on stage by Alan Richardson singing ‘Audacious Tar’ from HMS Pinafore and Shaun McCourt singing ‘You and Me’ from Book of Mormon. Keith dedicated the song ‘My Girl’ to his girlfriend and confessed to the audience (including her parents) that she is the one. One of my favourites was ‘Marry Me A Little’ from Company and the big finale of ‘Any Dream Will Do’ which was an audience sing-a-long was lovely.
A very enjoyable evening that Keith certainly seemed to settle into as the show went on.
Reviewed by West End Wilma