Theatre review: Spend, Spend, Spend

The second in an unintentional double bill of shows with the same word three times in the title, after Love, Love, Love it's Spend, Spend, Spend at the Union. That was the famous quote from pools-winner Viv Nicholson when asked what she'd do with all the money, and it proved all too true - she spent it all and when we first meet her in Steve Brown and Justin Greene's musical she's working in a beauty salon, having lost everything. The older Viv (Julie Armstrong) narrates her life story as her younger self (Katy Dean) grows up in a Leeds mining community with an abusive, alcoholic father (David Haydn.) First married at 16, it's her second husband Keith (James Lyne) who wins £152,319 on the football pools in 1961, and with rationing still in their memories they go all-out for a life of luxury. It doesn't go down well with their old community in Castleford, but when they move to a wealthier suburb their nouveaux-riche status is greeted with snobbery.

Theatre review: I Can't Sing!

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: No idea when the producers are going to risk letting the critics in for this one.

All the press about new musical I Can't Sing! has focused on the fact that it's got songs by Glen Ponder from Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. OK, so strictly speaking none of the press has been about that - they seem to be more interested in the fact that it's a show about The X Factor and has a book by Harry Hill. But it's also true that Steve Brown, who was better known in the mid-nineties as the sidekick whose house band had a different name every week, has brought his musical Savoir Faire to composing the show's songs. All the signs building up to I Can't Sing! were less than promising, from the early previews cancelled due to technical issues to the most worrying fact of all - that this is an official X Factor spin-off, fully authorised and approved by Simon Cowell. To be honest I was planning on skipping this one, but the casting of Nigel Harman as Simon meant my sister wanted to see it as a late Christmas present.