Looks Like We Made It is a modern musical set to Barry Manilow’s songs.
It opens in the year 2020 in a marriage counsellors office where a couple, Mandy (Jackie Kennedy) and Tony (Katie Fay) describe the rather desolate state of their marriage.
The show then goes retrospective covering the years between 2005 and 2020. Each individual year is divided into a narrative from Tony and Mandy talking about the factors that have turned the fissures of marital discontent into the gorge that is divorce.
The narratives are impressive, very convincing and well acted. Between each narrative there is a Barry Mainilow song, musically complementing the narrative, sung well by the vocalists accompanied by a trio of musicians.
I was really rather enjoying the performance until 2007. In that year the actors, Tony and Mandy, decided to take over the singing, which is a shame as the vocalists were better singers.
In addition the song chosen turns the performance from interesting into a bit of a schmaltzy dollop. Thankfully they reverted back to their acting narrative parts leaving the vocalists to do what they do best, sing.
All was redeemed in the year 2020 as Mandy gave an impressive narrative about her search for happiness and of her hope for their daughter’s future.
It should have ended there, alas not, I then found myself on a Carnival Cruise as the cast encouraged the audience to participate in a sing along of two of Barry’s more slushy songs.
If they had taken out the singing interlude by Tony and Mandy in addition to the Carnival Cruise sing along this would be a better show.
Review Looks Like We Made It, the Space @ Surgeon’s Hall.
[review rating=”3″ align = “left”]
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