Malvern Forum Theatre – 23rd September 2022
Reviewed by Julie Bellerby
4****
This is the story of Simon and Garfunkel’s musical career, told mainly through their songs, video footage of historical news stories and cartoons to show the movement of time.
With Phillip Murray Warson as Paul Simon, and Charles Blyth as Art Garfunkel, this duo gave an amazing rendition of the music, sounding very authentic. They told the story as themselves, not pretending to be Paul and Art.
As with a lot of musicians of the time, Paul and Art were friends from school and shared a love of music, releasing their first record at the age of 16 with little success. Throughout their lives, they had disagreements and undertook solo careers in song writing and acting, but kept returning together, singing their amazing song catalogue.
The projection of news stories, cartoons, pictures and facts were mainly interesting. One part of this display did not appear to make sense to the story and I wondered if picture and recording were not synchronised.
The artists were supported by 3 musicians, who were excellent, Adam Smith (Electric guitar/Keyboards), Leon Camfield (Bass), Mat Swales (Drums)
This was a ‘feel good’ evening, the audience were spell bound and enthusiastically gave their appreciation of the show with a standing ovation and calls for more, ending of course with the song A Bridge over Troubled Waters, arguably their greatest classic song of all time.