Skip to main content

Review of The Bodyguard at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes

The 1992 film The Bodyguard starring Kevin Costner and the acting debut for singing megastar Whitney Houston, was a slightly average romantic thriller, which is really mostly remembered for its musical turns from Houston, so, it is perhaps surprising that it took a whole twenty years to make it's transition to the stage as a musical version. Premiering in London in December 2012, ten months after Houston's tragic death, the show has had great success around the world, and with this, it's second UK tour, has a recognisable face in the star role, of Alexandra Burke, former X-Factor winner (curiously not mentioned in her programme biog).

The Bodyguard follows the story of former Secret Service agent turned bodyguard Frank Farmer (Benoît Maréchal) who is hired to protect multi-award-winning music star Rachel Marron, following her receiving threats from a stalker.

It's clear from the bold opening performance that Alexandra Burke as Marron is not looking to imitate Houston in the role, she performs the musical numbers her own way, and while the drama within The Bodyguard is often extremely light in content, she also proves more than capable in the acting department. However, Alexander Dinelaris' book based on Lawrence Kasden's screenplay is, very insubstantial. The Bodyguard is more about style than any substance, and that doesn't really matter, mostly. However, no one is coming out of a show like this with acting awards.

Burke is, as expected extremely strong in the singing numbers, however, it is worth noting that the best musical performance here does come from Micha Richardson as Rachel's sister, Nicki. While Burke delivers a concert-style performance, all breathy at times, Richardson delivers her songs in a much better-suited style for musical theatre, allowing us to actually hear the lyrics. She is the stronger of the two in the duet of Run To You and is quite exceptional performing Saving All My Love For You.

Benoît Maréchal looks the part as Farmer and is suitably reserved in the role, which allows his emotional chinks to be a pleasant surprise of performance. His performance in the karaoke bar provides the funniest moment of the evening. Well, the intentional one anyway.

This leaves the slight issue of the portrayal of The Stalker (Phil Atkinson), arriving top off, all muscles, and performed in comic book style in his dramatic scenes, it more often feels uncomfortable at times in the lightness with which it is portrayed. The "dramatic" scene in the second act is pure over-the-top panto villain with crashing doors, it lacks the drama it should have and feels it is using cheap horror movie style staging.

Beyond the slight hokum staging of some of the scenes, director Thea Sharrock brings a pretty slick production to the stage, Tim Hartley's set consisting, in part, of huge panels, sweeping in and out, opening occasional windows into scenes, or opening fully up to reveal the splendour of Marron's house.

Some of the musical sequences are at times far too over the top though, intense even, much more reminiscent of a full rock concert with lighting occasionally far too full on as well. During the club scene in the first act, personally from my seat in row HH, every few seconds I had a revolving light targetted directly at me. The musical numbers were nicely realistic, but perhaps for a stage show, they don't need to be perhaps quite as aggressive.

Michael Riley's orchestra brings superb music to the entire evening, and a nice touch at the end is a montage of views of each of the musicians, despite the fact that the side stage lights once again prevent you from watching this in comfort.

So, in a review packed with criticism, you would think the end result would be negative. However, it isn't really, at the end of the evening, even the slightly out of place encore (the fact that this is about a stalker and an important character is dead is quickly disregarded in the need to give a musical audience it's dancing moment), doesn't detract from the fact that The Bodyguard is a nice evening at the theatre. It is, however, not a cheap evening, with the very best tickets anywhere up to £70.

Fans of Burke, however, will, of course, love it, fans of a musical probably will, and fans of Houston's music certainly will, as for the general theatregoer, they might just possibly be less impressed at times. However, despite everything, if you have the funds, it still comes recommended for a surprisingly relaxed tale of a murdering stalker.

Extremely strong on musical numbers, extremely lightweight on drama.

Performance reviewed: Wednesday 13th March 2019 at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes.
The Bodyguard runs at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday 23rd March 2019 before continuing its tour.
Further details about Milton Keynes Theatre can be found at http://www.atgtickets.com/venues/milton-keynes-theatre/

Photos: Paul Coltas

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Murder She Didn't Write at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

Murder She Didn't Write , stopping off for a four-day run at Royal & Derngate on a lengthy UK tour, treads the now well-worn path of an improvisational evening of theatre entertainment. Unsurprisingly, from the title, this show from Degrees of Error's takes a murder mystery as its inspiration, with the story influenced by ideas from the audience each evening. Due to this, Murder She Didn't Write and a review are very much an individual affair. What I saw in my evening at the theatre will differ significantly from what the audience will see the following evening; however, the fine performers will remain. The touring cast, in no particular order, is Lizzy Skrzypiec, Rachael Procter-Lane, Peter Baker, Caitlin Campbell, Stephen Clements, Douglas Walker, Harry Allmark, Rosalind Beeson, Sylvia Bishop, Emily Brady, Alice Lamb, Sara Garrard, Peta Maurice and Matthew Whittle. For my performance, Skrzypiec, Procter-Lane, Baker, Walker, Bishop, and Clements were on stage alongsid...

Review of Immune by R&D Youth Theatre at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

The cover note for the script of Oladipo Agboluaje's Immune describes it as "a challenging science fiction play with a large cast", and the word challenging in this case is not a lie. This is a fast paced, multi-cast changing script which leaves little room for error for its young cast in the performance. If the script isn't enough to handle for the young performers, director Christopher Elmer-Gorry and designer Carl Davies have made the situation even more complex for the actors with the set and stage work. Having to manhandle great panels on wheels and a huge cube, which also splits in two occasionally, during scene changes requires skill, coordination and cooperation of a high level. As if all this is not enough, the actual story is epic enough for the relatively small stage of the Royal. Attempting to form an apocalyptic world (albeit only happening in Plymouth) offers challenges in itself, but Agboluaje's script does that in a sort of apocalypse in the teac...

Review of Legally Blonde at Royal & Derngate (Derngate), Northampton

As I settled down in my chair at the Derngate to see this touring production of the musical Legally Blonde , I generally had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Never having seen the film, read little up on the show, as is my want, and sitting in a clearly unbalanced gender demographic, this show was quite clearly not targeted at me. As the opening number, a catchy, but the incredibly screechy song, Omigod You Guys was performed, I was not, let's say, won over at first. However, it was clear that this just served as an overwhelming and ridiculous setup to the boldness of the show. The second number, Serious was a much better experience and genuinely funny song and throughout the tracks to come, there was much better to come. Our lead is Elle Woods (a charming, bubbly Lucie Jones), a typical caricatured blonde whose sole aim in life is to get the hand of her love in life Warner Huntingdon III (Liam Doyle). When he breaks up with her in pursuit of someone "serious...