Lost In Music Festival Theatre Edinburgh 23rd October 2022 Review
Lost In Music the stage show was at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh tonight and this show did exactly what it promised to do, take its audience back to the sounds of the Disco dance floor. This show is one of many different music shows from “Entertainers”, and over the decades this company has not only identified a place in the market for its shows, but invested in their development both in resources and creative talent to the point that they are where they are now – an international events and entertainment company.
You can tell from the moment that this show opens that it has a real budget and that care has been taken at every stage of it, from the technical lights and sounds, the costumes, the music and the performing artists (band and singers), and a lot of pre-production development obviously goes into a show like this too.
How did a subculture sound coming originally out of a small New York club scene in the early 1970s come, in a few short years, to be a global sound phenomenon? Well, here in the UK much of that introduction to those sounds was by some Northern Soul DJs bringing the vinyl records over from the USA and playing them in their sets. Some Northern Soul purists resisted the new sounds, but the music was out and very soon the sounds of “Disco” and “Discotheques” were a part of everyday life for so many people for a few glorious years.
With a show like this, there are simply so many songs that could be included that there is always going to be something not there for many people, and there were many songs that I wish the Lost in Music team had put into this show, but overall they chose a good selection.
Tonight, the sounds of Donna Summer, Earth Wind & Fire, Chic, and many more were obvious crowd pleasers to this mainly female audience, so this was really a bit of a “girls’ night out” show, and the “girls”, mostly of a certain age, were loving every moment of the non stop music.
Some of the huge and now iconic sounds of the era had to be here, and they were with songs like “Don’t Leave Me this Way” and “I Will Survive”. It was nice too to hear some Donna Summer classics again and a few Tavares songs. Overall, this show was a good representation of what Disco music was, a sound based in the driving beat of drum and bass lines. Mixed into that almost primal rhythm, were some of the most amazing songs and lyrics ever written (which is why they have survived down through the decades) to the, at times, musically very simple and often superficial. There was room on the disco dance floor for everything and everyone.
Perhaps just as important as the music, the performance team on stage also knew just how to inter-act with their audience, and that is a subtle skill in itself which they exploited to best use all evening.
It is never fair on a show like this to focus on any one performer as it is a collective production and performance and, for a touring show of mainly one-night dates, a large one to bring to the stage – 3 female vocalists, 2 male, lead guitarist, bass guitarist, keyboard player, drummer, and very importantly for creating a sound like tonight, brass and saxophone (3 in total). Lost in Music as a show is not cutting production corners, and was giving a pretty much full Festival Theatre audience exactly what they came out to hear tonight – some songs (and probably many memories) that were close to their hearts, and for an evening everyone was forgetting any troubles that they might have and just having themselves some fun and maybe even re-living some good memories from the disco dance floors of their youths.
One thing though still puzzles me for tonight’s show – no glitterballs?
Review by Tom King © 2022
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
You can tell from the moment that this show opens that it has a real budget and that care has been taken at every stage of it, from the technical lights and sounds, the costumes, the music and the performing artists (band and singers), and a lot of pre-production development obviously goes into a show like this too.
How did a subculture sound coming originally out of a small New York club scene in the early 1970s come, in a few short years, to be a global sound phenomenon? Well, here in the UK much of that introduction to those sounds was by some Northern Soul DJs bringing the vinyl records over from the USA and playing them in their sets. Some Northern Soul purists resisted the new sounds, but the music was out and very soon the sounds of “Disco” and “Discotheques” were a part of everyday life for so many people for a few glorious years.
With a show like this, there are simply so many songs that could be included that there is always going to be something not there for many people, and there were many songs that I wish the Lost in Music team had put into this show, but overall they chose a good selection.
Tonight, the sounds of Donna Summer, Earth Wind & Fire, Chic, and many more were obvious crowd pleasers to this mainly female audience, so this was really a bit of a “girls’ night out” show, and the “girls”, mostly of a certain age, were loving every moment of the non stop music.
Some of the huge and now iconic sounds of the era had to be here, and they were with songs like “Don’t Leave Me this Way” and “I Will Survive”. It was nice too to hear some Donna Summer classics again and a few Tavares songs. Overall, this show was a good representation of what Disco music was, a sound based in the driving beat of drum and bass lines. Mixed into that almost primal rhythm, were some of the most amazing songs and lyrics ever written (which is why they have survived down through the decades) to the, at times, musically very simple and often superficial. There was room on the disco dance floor for everything and everyone.
Perhaps just as important as the music, the performance team on stage also knew just how to inter-act with their audience, and that is a subtle skill in itself which they exploited to best use all evening.
It is never fair on a show like this to focus on any one performer as it is a collective production and performance and, for a touring show of mainly one-night dates, a large one to bring to the stage – 3 female vocalists, 2 male, lead guitarist, bass guitarist, keyboard player, drummer, and very importantly for creating a sound like tonight, brass and saxophone (3 in total). Lost in Music as a show is not cutting production corners, and was giving a pretty much full Festival Theatre audience exactly what they came out to hear tonight – some songs (and probably many memories) that were close to their hearts, and for an evening everyone was forgetting any troubles that they might have and just having themselves some fun and maybe even re-living some good memories from the disco dance floors of their youths.
One thing though still puzzles me for tonight’s show – no glitterballs?
Review by Tom King © 2022
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com