Music of The Night – Liverpool Theatre Festival

Last night I was back again to the Liverpool theatre festival at St Luke’s Church for another show entitled Music of the Night. A show full of some of the greatest musical numbers of all time. The show was sung by to performers Roy Locke who has starred in Phantom of the Opera in Australia and Germany. Joining him was Olivia Brereton who was in the recent Les Misérables tour and has played Christine in Phantom on the West End.

From the off the singing was out of this world and in a cloudless night sky it was the perfect setting for this show. We learned about their careers and why they choose the songs.

However, I found the set up of the show frustrating. They played music before the show to set the mood but half of the songs they played we heard again with them singing. I’m all for setting the mood with music but maybe not ones we are about to listen to. I also found it hard to understand that when Roy would sing a song he’d then go off Olivia would come one and sing then Roy would come back and it would do that for majority of the night. I’d much rather have seen a few songs by each artist and then finish with the duets. There was a moment where Roy went off left the stage empty and came back on and sang again which seemed rather pointless. Just sing the next song.

I also felt that some songs didn’t work with that operatic sound. For example, Roy said if you want to bring kids to a bit of opera on Saturday, we will be singing this song for them…. Hushabye Mountain. Yes, it’s a part of a musical and it is a musical theatre evening, but I felt it didn’t work in an operatic tone nor did I care for advertising it as an opera song. The same with can you feel the love tonight a great song but didn’t suit the operatic vibe.

As I say the setting was lovely the singing was great for the most part especially the Les Misérables and Phantom melody’s but I felt it was a bit jagged of course this is my own opinion the audience around me loved them and it as well as getting an encore. But it wasn’t for me.

Reviewer: Luke Stephenson

Reviewed: 17^th September 2020

North West End UK Rating: ★★★