Skip to main content

Review of The ELO Experience at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

Last year I attended The ELO on courtesy reviewing tickets for an official job for The Public Reviews website. Due to this I had to make a somewhat professional account of the show. I attended the show again yesterday as a paying guest and I write for my own personal blog, so expect frivolous.


In my "official" review last year (here) I made no mention of the fact that I was a huge ELO fan long before I found myself seeing the simply superb ELO Experience. This year I was once again joined by my companion of last year as well as a couple of pensioners, including a seventy-nine year old teenager and ELO superfan. It was all to make a most perfect night as once again the ELO Experience, led by our Jeff Lynne, a.k.a Andy Louis provided perfect representations of those classic tunes.

In a more relaxed state with no pressing need to make mental notes for review, I felt the whole experience an even more joyful affair. This is what truly comes across from the ELO Experience. On that stage are eight people who visibly are loving what they are doing. They have an infectious repartee with one another, there is fun on their faces. This to the outsider appears to be more than a job.

The show itself was basically the same as that of last year, with I believe (memory serving) a couple of different songs. Everything was there once again from the very classic songs as well as including a few of the same jokes from last year. However it mattered not, this was just pure musical joy and more of the same, was always going to be just more of the fun.

So once again we had the delightful Lego film during Horace Wimp, the uplifting Olympic footage during Hold On Tight and my very favourite ELO song Livin' Thing once again closing the first half.

The second half as before became a more relaxed affair with many up and dancing at the sides and in the boxes. I didn't this year detect a jiving couple during Beethoven, but there did seem to be more £20, sorry quid glow sticks on display. I know that I was more relaxed, and yes therefore more embarrassing (sorry once again you know who). I was just simply enjoying every minute.


As I know from the company I kept, music can stir memories like no other. So whether they be bitter sweet, flash backs to your youth, or just unadulterated madness, the ELO Experience brings it in the bucket load.

The best evening I have spent in the Derngate auditorium to date full stop and I am ready, just ready for the next time already. A simply must see if you are an ELO fan, and very much maybe a must see if you are not. I have no other way of recommending the ELO Experience any higher.

««««« with a little strange magic on top!


Performance reviewed: Thursday 24th September at the Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton. 

The ELO Experience performed at the Royal & Derngate (Derngate) on Saturday 6th September and are currently touring until Wednesday 3rd December. Full details can be found on their website here: http://www.elotribute.com/

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Sunny Afternoon at Milton Keynes Theatre

Sunny Afternoon , the Kinks-inspired jukebox musical, debuted on stage in 2014. Featuring Ray Davies' music and a book by Joe Penhall, it first found success in London before a UK tour in 2016/17. Now arriving at Milton Keynes Theatre with a new 2025/6 tour, the question remains: with some songs now over 60 years old, is Sunny Afternoon still relevant to today's audiences? While this is a jukebox musical, this show follows, via this system, the story of the formation and eventual success of The Kinks rather than creating a random story from the songs. Opening with the band The Ravens, the group is safe and sophisticated, with their prim-and-proper lead singer. However, the true band of the future, Ray Davies, Dave Davies, Mick Avory and Pete Quaife, are itching for freedom, to break away, especially writer Ray, who wants to create songs that mean something to people. Enter the suits of management, and the rocky creation of The Kinks begins. I had the pleasure of seeing Sunny A...

Review of It's A Wonderful Life by Masque Theatre at the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton

Remarkably I only saw the classic film It's A Wonderful Life last Christmas, this was thanks to spotting it lurking on my subscription of Netflix. A glorious heartwarming film perfect for Christmas? That must be why I was a blubbering mess at the end of it then. There was hope that in public, The Masque Theatre's performance of the radio version of the story didn't leave me in the same situation. As it happened it did a little as that final scene in the Bailey household played out again, but it didn't matter as there were members of the cast in the same broken state as many of us audience members. Left to right: Jo Molyneux, John Myhill, Lisa Wright, Michael Street, Lisa Shepherd and Jof Davies This was the first radio play that I had seen performed and on the evidence of this, I sure would like to see some more. While not having the drama of standard plays in their creation of moment and places, they do have a rather striking drive towards character creation. The ...

Review of UoN Fringe 2019: Working For The Man by Naked Truth Theatre at The Platform Club, Northampton

When looking at the prospect of the Fringe performance Working For The Man , it is slightly difficult to work out who is the bravest person involved in this remarkable one performer, one audience member show set totally within or around the edges of a car. I guess I would in my case, say myself, but it takes some daring for performer Ellie Lomas of Naked Truth Theatre to also create a piece that offers the boldness that it does. Working for the Man is perhaps unsurprisingly about the sex trade, and explores exploitation and how, or if, prostitution is taken as a serious profession. It involves no live audio dialogue from performer Ellie Lomas, instead, she inhabits a purely physical performance, that is progressed by the use of a pair of headphones which you are given at the start. Across this audio are instructions of what to do. "Get in the car", "sit in the middle seat in the back", "open the glove compartment" etc, as you move to different areas ...