Riddles and Romance – Underbelly Boulevard

For one night only, a cast of musical theatre and singing stars presented a concert of works by composer, Clive Richard Davis.  Davis debuted his work, At Last, It’s Summer, at the London Palladium in 2023 and this new concert included songs from that show, a musical comedy set in July 1920 on an English country estate, telling the tale of young love, as Alice falls for a handsome stranger. He, it turns out, is a nobleman fleeing the upheaval of the Russian Civil War. Alice has to persuade her father to allow the unlikely match.  Her father then too succumbs to love at first sight. 

Woven in between these songs of romance, the performance showcases compositions from Davis’s new musical theatre project, currently in development, The Three Riddles, in which a young man must solve three seemingly impossible riddles by sunrise, or he will lose his head.  The concert also featured a number of Davis’s standalone songs, all echoing his feel for the traditions of classic British musical theatre.

Leading the cast of Riddles and Romance was Kerry Ellis, who originated the role of Meat in We Will Rock You and Elphaba in Wicked in the West End. Also featured are Rob Houchen (Marius, Les Misérables), dancer and choreographer Jack Pallister, Shannon Rewcroft (At Last, It’s Summer), Henryk Firth (Mamma Mia!), Wendy Carr (founding member of classical-crossover group, Ida), and Steve Fortune (Jesus Christ Superstar, Chess, The Mousetrap). 

Composer Davis said, “It is a genuine privilege and a joy to have present day musical royalty like Kerry and Rob deliver my work.  Everybody needs a hobby and mine is composing music that could have been written in the heyday of musical theatre, inspired by Gershwin, Porter and Berlin, to name but three of many.”

Produced by Matty Hurst Productions, all proceeds from ticket sales of Riddles and Romance went to support the charity, Parkinson’s UK.