Grand Opera House York until Saturday 13th July 2019
Reviewed by Michelle Richardson
3***
Thriller Live, a two hour musical celebration featuring the hit songs of Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5. Celebrating a career spanning 40 years of the “King of Pop”, selling over 750 million records, this promises to be an extravaganza of his work. As well as currently touring, this show is still playing in the West End, making it one of their longest running shows.
With four main vocalists, Trace Kennedy, Britt Quentin, Rory Taylor and Ina Seidou, hitting the stage, the start of the show was very underwhelming, a bit quiet and flat, I was certainly not blown away. All four could sing, but some spark was missing. Seidou’s mike could have done with being turned up, she had a great voice but it needed to be louder. For me the stand out vocalist was Taylor, his rendition of She’s Out of my Life, was a definite highlight. The show did warm up with the addition of the dancers, that was until the vocalists left the stage and we were left with a video recording of a young would be Michael Jackson, singing Rockin’ Robin, accompanied by the dancers. I was disappointed in this aspect as we had come to see a live show.
The dancing really shone, with gusto and energy. Dancing was so integral in the Michael Jackson persona, and what we saw was pretty true to his memory. The dancing to Dangerous and Smooth Criminal, with the lean, were literally outstanding. The dancers were joined by the fifth vocalist Kieran Alleyne, who looked just like Jackson, with all his moves and mannerisms, magnificent, his dancing when he is on stage is fantastic. There is a big but here, even though he finished third in 2016’s X Factor he appeared to be miming to a couple of his songs, not that he had that many, disappointing.
Thriller Live is not a regular musical, there is no story behind the show, it is more of a concert/tribute show. There is a narration of bullet points in his music, hosted in the most part by Quentin, through his songs, but this was a bit disjointed and did not have a natural flow about it. The range of music, from ABC, to Dangerous, to my personal favourite PYT and many more, were good and I couldn’t help but singing and moving along in my seat to the music.
During the first half of the show we were dragged up out of our seats and encouraged to put our hands up in the air and have a sing off with the other half of the audience. This was a bit uncomfortable as the audience had yet to warm up, and the York crowd can be a reserved bunch. It was unfortunate that this was the only time, apart from the finale, that the audience were up dancing along. The finale really lifted the show and you couldn’t help but get carried away at that point, it is such a shame that energy wasn’t evident for the show in it’s entirety.
I expected so much more but unfortunately I was not blown away by this performance, even with the high energy dancing. It is still worth a watch and is suitable for all, and a great chance to hear some great tunes. I nearly forgot to mention the moonwalking, wow, that alone is probably worth a ticket.