Taking on a musical like Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, the true story of a young man who dreams of being a drag queen and wearing a dress to prom, can be an ambitious project requiring a strong, triple-threat cast, clever staging and the energy to send the show strutting into the audience’s hearts in glittery heels.
Thankfully D&S Productions have achieved this in spades. Under the assured direction of Donna Dale, the company have delivered a sassy and sparkly show that brings all the right notes of humour and humanity to a hugely enjoyable performance.
Donna has honed her ensemble into a very high standard, with smart blocking and some lovely directorial touches. Similarly Musical Director Grace Harman leads her band with a solid showcase of Dan Gillespie Sells’ fizzy musical score.
And Charlotte Allmand has created strong, vibrant choreography that makes the most of the cast’s ability and helps sell the big ensemble numbers.
At the heart of the show is Jamie New, our drag queen in training heels. Jack Darker gives a brilliant account of Jamie, where, despite illness impacting his vocals, he builds in a lovely balance of teenage cockiness and vulnerability, alongside great physicality.
Lindsey Darker (Jack’s real-life mum) brings a lot of warmth to her role as Margaret, with good renditions of her solos. And Sara Cubbin steals every scene she’s in as brashy best friend Ray.
Similarly, Nick Hawkswell is charismatic and charming as former drag legend Loco Chanelle and Kaya Howard is excellent as Jamie’s best friend Pritti, both with lovely vocals.
Other performance highlights come from our three supporting drag queens Sandra Bollock (George Lomax), Laika Virgin (Tayler Spruce) and Tray Sophisticay (Damian Riverol) who guide Jamie through his first steps into drag, and Anna Graves as pragmatic teacher Miss Hedge.
The technical and visual aspects of the show are, on the whole, equally good, with great costumes by Donna and Tayler, and highly effective lighting design from Joe Sanderson.
There are a few wobbly aspects – occasionally the pace of the dialogue is uneven with some of the show’s one-line zingers and stingers being either thrown away or a little slow, lessening their impact. Some scene transitions are slow and quite noisy.
The one real let down is the sound, with several issues that will hopefully be resolved for the rest of the run. Some mics are cued late leading to individual solo lines being missed. Principal mics suffer from dreadful crackling including in some pivotal quiet moments. And the ensemble is regularly fighting against the volume of the band rendering some lyrics inaudible.
Despite this, there is still lots for the audience to enjoy, and it is a very well deserved standing ovation that greets the company at its curtain call who, overall, bring glitter, guts and glam to The Gladstone.
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie runs until Saturday 31st May. For tickets visit https://gladstonetheatre.org.uk/#whatson
Reviewer: Lou Steggals
Reviewed: 28th May 2025
North West End UK Rating:
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