Monday, December 2

Tag: Justin Greene

Spend Spend Spend – Royal Exchange
North West

Spend Spend Spend – Royal Exchange

Viv Nicholson is a pretty obscure name in British popular culture nowadays, perhaps the odd fan of 80’s indie darlings The Smiths would recognise her as the brassy blonde staring out aggressively from the front cover of ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’,  her real claim to fame having been gradually consigned to the dustbin of history. However, back in 1964, when she and her husband Keith won £152,319 (the equivalent of £4.3 million today) on the football pools, she could reasonable lay claim to have been as famous in the UK as The Beatles or Harold Wilson.  This festive season, The Royal Exchange have mounted a joyous revival of ‘Spend Spend Spend’ the 1998 musical by the late Steve Brown and Justin Greene, exploring Viv’s rise, fall and redemption, and in a cracking return to...
Spend, Spend, Spend – Guilford School of Acting
REVIEWS

Spend, Spend, Spend – Guilford School of Acting

Upon winning a fortune of £152,000 (today’s equivalent of 3.3m) on the football pools in 1961, Viv Nicholson told the press she was going to "spend, spend, spend." Her true life rags to riches story and its decline back to rags is chronicled in this musical with book and lyrics by Steve Brown and Justin Greene based on the original book by Viv Nicholson herself and Stephen Smith. The story both starts and ends in present day, with Viv working in a Hairdressers in Castleford, West Yorkshire. We are transported back to the young, 16-year-old Viv as the story unfurls of her abusive father, poverty to a pools win, five unconventional marriages, fast cars, Fur coats, lots of alcohol and parties and a desperate need to be loved. Spend, Spend Spend does not make Viv as happy as she first think...