The Story of Soul Festival Theatre Edinburgh5th March 2023 Review
The Story of Soul was at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh tonight for one night only, and this touring show is another from the wide range of musical packages from “Entertainers”. If you have not heard of the company name then the chances are that you have maybe been to one of their other shows, or at least seen some advertising for it, as their production team and artists cover a very wide range of popular music and performers.
The Story of Soul - A Journey Through The History Of Soul is not so much of a journey in linear time through the music, but a constant switching of some of the biggest “soul music” hits from mostly the 1960s and 1970s, and the format of this show is pretty much the same as two other similar shows by Entertainers – The Magic Of Motown (at Usher Hall Edinburgh next week 12th March) and Lost In Music (back at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh on 15th October) and that format is an on stage band fronted by a team of up front performers (six tonight) who all take their turns as solo or backing singers as the song requires. At times this does make the show feel a bit like those old 1960s “review tours” that I wish I had been able to see. However, this approach by default means that all of “The Story of Soul” team have to have a lot of different performance skills to bring to the stage and sometimes this means that they are going to be better suited to some songs than others, or even sometimes, as tonight, you think that someone else on stage should have performed that song instead.
The premise behind this show (and any from Entertainers) is it seems a simple one - entertain your audience and give them music that they both love and want to hear. To this end, the team did this well tonight, but there were some problems. Top of this list for me was all too often the very reserved and at times very cold reaction of the audience to the music being performed on stage, and that lack of connectivity with their audience was showing on the performers at times. When you open a show with the classic crowd pleaser “Sweet Soul Music” you expect an audience response and, to be honest, they did get it, but anyone up on their feet was swiftly put in their place by crowd control staff. In any seated auditorium, getting that balance of not only crowd safety, but ensuring that everyone who wants to remain seated can still see and enjoy the show that they have paid to see is always going to be a delicate balance, but a show like this needs some level of spontaneity to it, both for the audience and the performers on stage. Even well tried classics such as “Land of A Thousand Dances” and “My First, My Last, My Everything” fared little or no better later in the show.
On the positive side though, there was the music and of course classic songs from Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Earth Wind and Fire, and Chaka Khan were what many people in the audience expected to be there, and they were. At times though, when you have a show like this one that is designed to be a high energy performance of non-stop music for the whole evening, it is maybe time to reflect that this is only one aspect of “soul music” and that perhaps the most important one is still that ability that “soul music” has and many of these original artists had in abundance, that ability to break your heart in two with nothing more than the whisper of a few words.
The Story of Soul is a relatively new touring show from Entertainers and it does, for me, need tightened up a little bit in some areas, particularly the on-stage choreography, and it desperately needs to add a horn section to the musical line up as that is the beating heart of so many of the songs performed tonight.
At the end of the night though, everyone around me in the theatre that I spoke to had had a good night out listening to some of their favourite songs performed live, so job done once again for the whole team at Entertainers.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
The Story of Soul - A Journey Through The History Of Soul is not so much of a journey in linear time through the music, but a constant switching of some of the biggest “soul music” hits from mostly the 1960s and 1970s, and the format of this show is pretty much the same as two other similar shows by Entertainers – The Magic Of Motown (at Usher Hall Edinburgh next week 12th March) and Lost In Music (back at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh on 15th October) and that format is an on stage band fronted by a team of up front performers (six tonight) who all take their turns as solo or backing singers as the song requires. At times this does make the show feel a bit like those old 1960s “review tours” that I wish I had been able to see. However, this approach by default means that all of “The Story of Soul” team have to have a lot of different performance skills to bring to the stage and sometimes this means that they are going to be better suited to some songs than others, or even sometimes, as tonight, you think that someone else on stage should have performed that song instead.
The premise behind this show (and any from Entertainers) is it seems a simple one - entertain your audience and give them music that they both love and want to hear. To this end, the team did this well tonight, but there were some problems. Top of this list for me was all too often the very reserved and at times very cold reaction of the audience to the music being performed on stage, and that lack of connectivity with their audience was showing on the performers at times. When you open a show with the classic crowd pleaser “Sweet Soul Music” you expect an audience response and, to be honest, they did get it, but anyone up on their feet was swiftly put in their place by crowd control staff. In any seated auditorium, getting that balance of not only crowd safety, but ensuring that everyone who wants to remain seated can still see and enjoy the show that they have paid to see is always going to be a delicate balance, but a show like this needs some level of spontaneity to it, both for the audience and the performers on stage. Even well tried classics such as “Land of A Thousand Dances” and “My First, My Last, My Everything” fared little or no better later in the show.
On the positive side though, there was the music and of course classic songs from Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Earth Wind and Fire, and Chaka Khan were what many people in the audience expected to be there, and they were. At times though, when you have a show like this one that is designed to be a high energy performance of non-stop music for the whole evening, it is maybe time to reflect that this is only one aspect of “soul music” and that perhaps the most important one is still that ability that “soul music” has and many of these original artists had in abundance, that ability to break your heart in two with nothing more than the whisper of a few words.
The Story of Soul is a relatively new touring show from Entertainers and it does, for me, need tightened up a little bit in some areas, particularly the on-stage choreography, and it desperately needs to add a horn section to the musical line up as that is the beating heart of so many of the songs performed tonight.
At the end of the night though, everyone around me in the theatre that I spoke to had had a good night out listening to some of their favourite songs performed live, so job done once again for the whole team at Entertainers.
Review by Tom King © 2023
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com