Dancing in the Streets

Dancing in the Streets essentially was one of the best shows.... ever!!!!

Capital Radio, 20/07/05

One of the finest shows of its kind that I've ever seen!

Lee Stevens, Talksport Radio

Memories of the Motown Stars

THE golden years of Motown music were relived in Newcastle last week - and it was just as if the stars of yesteryear were really in town.

The Journal Tyne Theatre was transformed into 1960s America, where a team of talented performers recreated the classic hits of Motown stars from Diana Ross to Stevie Wonder and The Temptations.

Such was the attention to detail in costumes, and the sheer talent of the performers, the illusion that The Supremes and Marvin Gaye were actually on stage was successfully mastered.

Running from Tuesday to Saturday, Dancing in the Streets was in full flow by the time I took my seat at the back of a packed audience on Thursday.

Naturally, with one hit after another, songs such as What Become of the Broken Hearted had several theatre-goers to their feet well before the interval.

And by the time My Girl, It Takes Two, and Heard it Through the Grapevine were sounded, the atmosphere was just like what the swinging sixties intended.

Top marks to director Keith Strachan, choreographer Carole Todd and set designer Sean Cavanagh for bringing Motown to the North-East in such entertaining style.

Hexham Courant

Like watching the real thing!

Motown’s overflowing catalogue of hits provides the basis for this celebratory show and a sheer love of the music must make its fans want to see other artists pretending to be their heroes. But then, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Part narrative, telling Motown’s extraordinary story, this is mainly a concert-style recreation of most of its biggest stars.

Ray Shell plays a former Hitsville soundman who, in recalling the hit factory’s glory days, introduces the singers - some of whom look and sound more accurate than others - and encourages the crowd to party. Fronted by Robert Grose as Levi Stubbs, The Four Tops bring everyone to their feet, but - dressed in replicas of their white fur-trimmed gowns and fur capes it is Siam Hurlock’s remarkable portrayal of Diana Ross and Paula Kay and Jacqui Zvimba as the other Supremes who provide a truly spine-tingling moment. Singing a medley including Stop! In the Name of Love and Baby Love, you could almost believe you were back in the sixties.

Old favourites include Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas and Gladys Knight. Nathaniel Morrison makes a more-than-passable Little Stevie Wonder. The eight-piece onstage band was never going to equal the incredible Funk Brothers’ sound but costumes, hair and make-up are authentic reproductions, as is choreographer Carole Todd’s reprise of the unique dance moves.

This is a cut above most nostalgia shows and everyone is as ecstatic as if they had been watching the real thing.

Liz Arratoon, The Stage

AS THE TEMPTATIONS SANG ‘I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day’, to a full house at the Hull Theatre last night I thought, in a sentimental moment, how true they were.

On yet another grey day in June, I couldn’t think of a better antidote for the summer blues than being regales with some of the finest and funkiest Motown hits in history.

Okay, so it wasn’t the original Temptations, but it was definitely the next best thing as the performers looked sounded and moved like them.

They were just one in a stream of acts signed to the Motown label, including Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Martha Reeves ad the Vandellas and the Four Tops - all represented in the show, Dancing in the Streets. One by one the acts were called out by narrator and performer Ray Shell, as they took the audience back to the label’s golden era. I consider myself a dedicated follower of this genre of music, which many in the audience seemed to be but I was amazed a how many of the songs I did know, including My Girl, The Four Tops’ classic Reach Out and Marvin Gaye’s I Heard it Through The Grapevine.

The tribute to the Supremes with Diana Ross was the real highlight for me, as they performed a mix of all her big hits and there wasn’t one I couldn’t sing along to - not bad for someone who thought they didn’t know their Motown.

We’ve heard these classics so many times - at weddings, in films, on TV - they’ve almost become second nature, so it’s easy to forget the impact they had on music and a generation.

Its was 1959 when songwriter Berry Gordy had a hit with Reet Potite performed by Jackie Wilson. Gordy formed Tamla Motown Records, opening the floodgates for black soul music to reach a white audience. And in 1964, it hit the UK mainstream when the Supremes’ Baby Love gave the label its first UK number one. However, a hastily organised tour received a lukewarm reception.

Fast forward more than 40 years and here we are in Hull enjoying a recreation of that tour, but there’s nothing lukewarm about how the performances are received. With hands in the air, clapping, and all ages dancing, this soul music has been passed down through the generations and speaks to every one of them.

Jane Briscoe, Hull Daily Mail

Show will have you dancing in the aisles

I would challenge anyone to stay in their seat throughout this storming show. It was standing room only at the Mayflower last night as a packed audience took to the aisles for Dancing in the Streets.

I took just one bar of Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me) for hundreds of Motown lovers to burst into song. They clapped, cheered and whooped.

And by the end of two hours of classic tunes, there was not a bum on a seat.

Dancing in the Streets is a celebration of the golden years of Motown led by a cleaner at Hitsville Studio in Detroit. However, there is more to his talent than being handy with a mop. He knows the ins and outs of the 60’s black soul revolution is extremely witty and just so happens to have one of the most powerful voices I have ever heard. The show takes you through the Motown repertoire from al the top bands with songs including I heard It Through The Grapevine, Baby Love, My Guy, Reach Out I’ll Be There, Stop In The Name Of Love and You Can’t Hurry Love.

Southampton Daily Echo

A Night Filled with Motown culture

Hosted by the Flying Music Company, the performers could have been mistaken for the real legends themselves!

Classic hits from the likes of The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Martha Reeves and the Temptations created a show full of energy celebrating the talent that came form the Motown era.

The lighting was effective as bands of colour were used throughout which helped to capture the mood of each individual song.

A particular favourite was the splash of pink used in the song 'My endless love’, creating a romantic vision. The costumes were a grand display of the period. The Supremes white fur trimmed dresses and the light catching glitzy costumes were captivating!

The audience loved this show as this was evident through them singing, swaying and clapping along to the hits. By the finale, everyone was dancing in the aisles, including myself! How could anyone resist when the catchy numbers of 'It takes two’ and ÔDancing in the Streets’ are played.

If you are a fan of Motown, then this is a must!

Hayley Marsden, Stockport Express

If you were fortunate enough to be around in the sixties, then you'll have witnessed the explosion of the music phenomenon known simply as Motown.

The record label, of the same name, provided a platform for the greatest soul musicians of our time and launched The Motown Revue Tour in 1965 which changed the face of music in this country and the world forever. Dancing In The Streets, named after the hit song by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, is an evocation of that period. Although it's minus any of the major artists of that time, nevertheless the excellent vocalists paid a fitting tribute to their music.

All the Motown favourites are remembered including The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Jimmy Ruffin and Diana Ross and The Supremes, although the Temptations numbers won the loudest cheers.

The evening started well with everyone singing along to the songs. There's a terrific band of musicians on stage and the musical numbers are glossily presented with costumes of the period and the routines to match. But first night glitches meant that the Master of Ceremonies for the evening, who sang like a dream and was charming throughout, was slow to make his appearance at the end of each set and when he did the spotlight was often in the wrong place. This gave a rather amateur feel to this otherwise professional production.

Unfortunately that spoilt the show for me personally because I've seen it done better but the audience still enjoyed every minute of this nostalgic, musical trip down memory lane.

This show has been here several times before, usually as a one night stand, but if Motown is your kind of music, then it's here all this week at the Opera House.

Natalie Anglesey, Manchester Evening News

It takes a strong central thrust of theatricality from Emcee Courtney Buchanan to ensure that Flying Music's Motown tribute night goes with the pizzazz that it deserves. It might be corny to the point of creakiness as he opens the show in stagehand mode, broom in hand, mooching out from between the curtain - but it is that very element of the old-school which gives the whole evening the feel-good sense of being there that it needs.

Much of the first half is taken up by absolutely correct recreations of performances from the early 1965 UK tour of the Tamla Motown Revue. The difficulty is that while this was perfect pop for the tranny, these were also the sort of performance that doesn't allow audience interaction. As a consequence, it sounds sterile to 21st century ears, if not the feet.

It is not until Landi Oshinowo, as Martha Reeves, takes the stage that you get any sense of these performers making the songs their own. Indeed, Asya O'Flaherty's performances as Diana Ross just highlight how exposed a singer's own shortcomings can be when they mimic another person's version of a song.

This is but a quibble, however, in what is on the whole a highly polished production. The band, led by MD John Rutledge and with Andy Hunter prominent on sax, is exactly the Funk Brothers powerhouse the music needs. And as the hits move forward to the late sixties and early seventies, the whole tenor of the show gets warmer.

The Stage, September 2007

All Killer, No Filler

"In the early 1960s, in a town called Detroit, local kids were looking for a form of expression they could call their own." So says the press handout by way of introduction to this stage musical, which has opened in the West End after a regional tour. Everyone knows what happened next. The "town" (in fact, a sprawling "motor city", as coined by the Martha Reeves song after which the show is named) produced a record label that triggered a youthquake. The Motown story, and the hits of its golden first five years, is so familiar that this show should be docked a point for obviousness.

Having said that, the point is immediately restored in recognition of the producers' ingenuity - in search of an angle, they've linked the show to the 40th anniversary of the label's first UK tour. That's the plot in a nutshell: it's 1965, and we're watching the young Stevie Wonder, Supremes, Smokey Robinson and many other soon-to-be-household names (all played by unknown British singers) strut their considerable stuff for the first time on a London stage. The Temptations, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye - they're all here, evening-gowned, pompadoured and touchingly eager. There's even an incongruous visit by an oily lover-boy from the future, Lionel Richie - who, bafflingly, gets the female half of the crowd in the biggest tizzy of the night.

They sing their hits, nearly 40 of them, which can genuinely be classed as all killer, no filler. And, well, that's it. There's nothing beyond karaoke performances in period costume. While there is a master of ceremonies - American actor Ray Shell, whose hammed-up ghetto accent distracts from the fact that he isn't actually very funny - his only task is to introduce the acts.

Hence, there's no history or attempt at social contextualisation, which is scandalous given Motown's critical role in bringing black music into the mainstream. Amazingly, Shell ends with the words: "These songs are still heard in shopping centres around the world." Surely the dampest squib ever to be applied to tunes that changed the face of music.

The Guardian, July 2005

Yester-me, Yester-you

FORTY years ago, the music of Tamla Motown came to London. It was performed by the first wave of its greatest stars, and the theatres were half empty because we didn't know any better.

There is, therefore, no excuse for missing out this time round. Those original stars have dispersed to distant galaxies, but the music they introduced us to has lost precisely none of its sassy sheen.

Dancing In The Streets is not an intellectual entertainment. There is no attempt to place the wonderful music that suddenly poured out of Detroit in the Sixties in any kind of context. The streetwise finaglings of Motown founder Berry Gordy do not merit a mention. This is simply a recital of the magical music that was conjured up in a tiny little establishment on an ordinary street in a less than photogenic city. Quite a considerable quantity of pop moves were invented in the Sixties, and they get a mightily affectionate reprise here.

The hands are in constant communication with the music, and the legs are not afraid to do their own thing. The hairstyles - I would say wig designs, but that's rude - have a life of their own.

This is a cheap and cheerful show. Spotlights beam down inverted cones of smoky light. The singers have smiles like slices of watermelon. There are some randomly selected blow-ups of old Motown stars as a backdrop.

Nobody mortgaged the ranch for this one. But the fact is that when the pretend Temptations are proving that My Girl still warms cockles, or the stand-in Marvin Gaye relays the gossip implicit in I Heard It Through The Grapevine, the audience is tempted beyond endurance to get up on its feet and shake that thing that is related to a donkey.

Pete Clark

Hits This Big Deserve a Full House

CALLIN' out around the world, are you ready for some classic beats? Well, judging by the number of empty seats during last night's performance of Dancing in the Streets, the answer was no. However, the Motown fans that had gone along to the Playhouse were doing their level best to compensate for the sea of red velvet on display

The best thing about a show like this, which features hits from showbiz legends such as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross, is that you'd have to live in a cave not to have heard most of the songs. And even then it would have to be a cave on Mars.

The production comprises 11 central artists who spend the evening stepping into the shoes of various Motown greats. They are accompanied throughout by a superb group of musicians.

The first act introduced by master of ceremonies Courtney Buchanan was the perfect choice, The Marvelettes with Please Mr Postman, which in 1961 was the first Motown record to top the US singles charts.

Next to hit the stage was Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, performing hits including You Really Got a Hold on Me and Tears of a Clown.

By the time Martha Reeves, performed brilliantly by Landi Oshingowo, burst into Nowhere to Run, sporadic dancing had begun to break out in the stalls - an indication of the feel-good nature of the music.

Duane O'Garro, who portrayed the genius that is Stevie Wonder complete with trademark shades and head-bobbing, kept the hits coming with the brilliant Uptight (Everything's Alright) and the beautiful For Once in My Life.

The audience were then introduced to The Supremes, a group Buchanan described as "even bigger than The Spice Girls". And if anyone was in any doubt over such a bold claim, they were soon put in their place by killer renditions of You Can't Hurry Love, Stop! In the Name of Love and Baby Love.

Buchanan himself grabbed the microphone for the Jimmy Ruffin classic What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? It's a pleasure to hear this song performed properly, if only to help banish the memories of Robson & Jerome, a couple of third-rate actors with a karaoke machine.

The second half of the show saw the introduction of The Temptations, "a group so hot their suits are made of asbestos", performing more well-known hits like Get Ready and My Girl, while Marvin Gaye (Wayne Anthony-Cole) belted out Grapevine.

The only disappointing aspect of the evening was the poor attendance. These tremendous artists are reaching out, so make sure you're there.

Scotsman.com, Spetember 2007