Skip to main content

Review of On Your Feet! at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes

Being of about the right age when Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine first started to make it big, I was quite a fan. Even going so far as to have a few old vinyl singles and a couple of her albums on this new fangled CD system, in what was an admittedly limited music collection. In this collection was my favourite Estefan album, Cuts Both Ways, which included the track Get On Your Feet, which of course inspired the title of this relatively new musical of the life of the Estefan's. So, does it captivate this distant original fan, and or does it resemble a dad doing a bit of Latin dancing?

On Your Feet! is a telling of the Estefan's battle for success beyond the Latin market and interspersed with snippets of what made them who they were with family flashbacks, and it's safe to say that it is an endless mix of success and failure.

Where it works; vibrant colours from costume, backdrops, some superb choreography, and excellent music from the superb, occasionally on stage, band; this is a brilliantly entertaining show. However, for all its vibrancy from this, the often dull and corny book, over-complicated and busy scene changes (what is going on with those flats being moved all the while, even in scene changes? So clunky and distracting), and a few only average performances means it never quite comes to life.

Maybe half of the issue was that opening night of this first UK tour at Milton Keynes Theatre was beset with problems. These included a fifteen-minute delay at the start, cover Francesca Lara Gordon on for Philippa Stefani as Gloria Estefan, projection cutting out and showing the dreaded "signal" message in huge lettering on its return, a dodgy mic and a bit of set that refused for far too long to fix down. It's safe to say it probably wasn't the most successful evening of the tour.

Understudy Gordon as Gloria Estefan is a very capable performer, commending on stage with a superb singing voice, however, for me she doesn't quite cut it as Gloria, missing the vocal style by some distance. Gordon though beyond this was amazingly confident stepping into such an iconic role.

George Ioannides as Emilio Estefan is excellent, despite what felt like a rather nervous start in his opening singing number. He looks the part, and at a very shallow level, such as the audience fell to, he looks good in tight shorts. His charisma wins the day throughout and his singing talent is quality, despite being challenged with extremely difficult numbers to perform.

Madalena Alberto has perhaps the strongest singing voice as Gloria Fajardo, and her Mi Tierra is perhaps the best-performed song of the evening as a result. Completing the main cast is Karen Mann as Gloria's grandmother Consuelo, and this often comic role manages to garner most of the laughs from the show, despite it being very caricatured at times.

On Your Feet! is a curious thing, despite being beset by issues and rather corny in written content and scene-setting still manages to just about entertain throughout. If only the show itself could have been as upbeat as the music that inhabits it, this could have been a cracker of a show. As it is, it entertains, but never really fulfils the legacy that it should for the talent that is Gloria Estefan and the battles that she and her husband Emilio won.

A flawed but still entertaining telling of the life of the Estefan's.
⭐⭐⭐

Performance reviewed: Tuesday 11th February 2020 at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes.
On Your Feet! runs at Milton Keynes Theatre until Sunday 15th  February2020.

Further details about Milton Keynes Theatre can be found at http://www.atgtickets.com/venues/milton-keynes-theatre/

Photos: Johan Persson

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 Les Misérables: School Edition (NMTC Youth Society) at the Cripps Hall Theatre, Northampton

From my four years or so of watching theatre in Northampton, there is one thing beyond the huge professional shows that I see touring, that I always enjoy so much more (despite the occasional dodginess of the quality), and that is youth theatre. For me in my heart, it adds something special, here we have the often maligned young of today, getting out there and doing something truly fulfilling. Here though, with the debut of the newly formed Youth Society, spinning off from the adult Northampton Musical Theatre Company, we have something also which goes beyond enthusiasm of the young to create a really special piece of theatre. Les Misérables is in the top three of musicals for me, I love its huge numbers, I connect to its story, and it has some extremely strong characters, for me, it just works. Therefore, you could say that I would have an immediate bias towards this show, however, I do feel protective of it as well, so, it needs to be done right. However, I have nothing to worry...