Save the Last Dance for Me

Marina Theatre, Lowestoft

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 5 July 2012.

Fresh from the creators of the top-rated Dreamboats and Petticoats, Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, comes a musical concoction set in the early 1960s.

It is appropriate that it should come to Lowestoft en route to the West End, as much of it is set in the town of that time. Memories flood back.

The plot is simple – black US airman and white English girl fall in love when she and her sister take a week’s seaside holiday against their parents’ wishes.

But music brings it to youthful life. Reliving the hit songs of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, the on-stage band pump out classics like This Magic Moment, Sweets for My Sweet, A Teenager in Love, Suspicion, Viva Las Vegas, Marie’s the Name, Then He Kissed Me and Save the Last Dance for Me.

This is a polished concert of treasured tunes bridging rock ‘n’ roll with commercial teen pop and heralding the hippie era to come from a versatile cast of actors/musicians dancing like kids did then.

There is humour aplenty in English and American language confusions. It’s nostalgic fun, high energy, feel-good and worth grabbing a ticket before they’re all gone.