This post is not sponsored. I was gifted tickets for myself, and a plus one, to see Fame: The Musical at the Pavilion in Bournemouth. All thoughts and opinions are my own
When I was at school, I loved performing. I wasn’t any good, but I loved doing it. In sixth form, school put on a production of Fame. Long story short, the only girls that were cast in the production were ones that were either favourites of the music department (which I was not!) or if they did drama (again I did not). If you couldn’t tell, I wasn’t cast in a main role. I was cast in the ensemble, however I was a little gutted. The kind of tradition that my school had gone down in the past was that everyone in sixth form got cast in a main role as it was there last chance. So, its fair to say, I was gutted.
To cut a long story short, I ended up leaving the production, due to there being problems between me and the teachers. So when I was offered the chance to see Fame, I was apprehensive. Unfortunately, the musical has been tainted with bad experiences from school. However, I wanted to go and see it to try and put my personal feelings aside.
The thing about doing this production at school, is that you know the majority of the words to the songs. So it was nice to open up the show and instantly know the words to the songs. There are plenty of songs in Fame: The Musical, including the super famous title song Fame! At the end of the show, everyone gets up on their feet and dances to the song. It was lovely to see the whole theatre up and about dancing to a classic.
The dancing in the show was incredible. There were so many different genres of dance in the musical. I never realised how much ballet was in the show. I’m not normally a ballet fan, but I liked that they added a couple of twists in with a little bit of hip-hop here and there. It was nice! Jorgie Porter (who played Iris) was INCREDIBLE! She was so graceful and elegant in her moves. You would think that she is a professional ballet dancer rather than a soap opera actress who was a runner up in Dancing on Ice!
One thing I didn’t like about the show was about the girl who thought she was fat. Being a girl of a certain size/weight this is a very touchy subject in my eyes. The actress was certainly not fat. I mean, the song was hilarious! I related to it on every level. Especially when she mentioned the ‘seafood diet’. This meant that she sees food and eats it, well that is me on every level. However, the actress (Mabel) was not overweight in any way shape or form. I get that it’s about how everyone in Hollywood is super skinny. I get it. But that doesn’t mean I like it.
It frustrates me a little that the cast all looked fairly old. They definitely did not look like 15 year olds! They looked more like hypo-active 35 year old 15 year olds. I get that you can’t really get children/teens to play the parts, but a younger looking cast would have been a bit better. It also didn’t help that I have actually seen one of the actors (Keith Jack) before when I was younger when he played Joseph, so I already knew that there was ZERO way that these actors were going to be teens! However, saying this, I do think that actually the cast were incredibly talented. Especially Stephanie Rojas who plays Carmen, INCREDIBLE! She hit every note whilst running up and down stairs and she can seriously dance. I would love to take a page out of her book!
Overall, I did enjoy the performance. I do think the show is a little outdated though. Maybe that is coming from someone who was not born in the 80s and someone who isn’t into dance. However, saying that, the dancing was incredible. I definitely could not get my legs up that high!
If you would like to book tickets to see Fame, click here. Or if you would like to see any of my other theatre reviews, click here.
