This Was Your Life is a rethink of the classic game show, in which its audience can decide whether its contestant, Michael, will go to heaven or hell. Quite Nice Theatre’s three actors portray over twenty characters in a show which, although good fun, lacks a certain “je ne sais quoi”.
The music is very simple, making the songs catchy and easy to remember. I found myself humming the opening on the way home from the show. However one could be forgiven for confusing the majority of the songs as they are almost all based on very similar chord structures, with identical tempos. As most of the show was sung, it seemed to blur into one, rather than allowing its audience to focus on individual moments, despite sung performances being strong.
The acting is, on the whole, not especially good; rather than look at the emotions of the characters in depth, Quite Nice Theatre have gone for a fairly base level brand of humour throughout the musical, which renders more emotional moments quite flat. The actors’ difficulties in transforming the show’s atmosphere from comic to serious, when required, are sadly all too clear. Another lack of genuineness stemmed from Marina Waters’ portrayal of multiple male characters. Because she is so feminine and delicate-looking, any realistic portrayal of a man would be impossible, and we miss the point of scenes such as Granddad’s appearance. That said, her portrayals of Fiona and Jessica are admirable, and Sam Harding is consistently extremely centred and focused in all of his roles, especially the presenter Dan Starshine.
The show may market itself as having two completely different endings, but this is not really the case. Obviously the contestant can go either to heaven or hell, but I expected that there would be totally different scenes and songs depending on the audience decision – in reality there can only be a few changes to the lyrics of the end song.
This Was Your Life is undoubtedly a very cheerful and relaxing show, however it lacks brilliance. Much of the action and music could easily be described as basic and relatively uninspired, and at the Fringe it doesn’t stand up to its more innovative and edgy competitors. Although well worth a watch, I would not recommend going out of your way to see this musical.
