REVIEW: Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story At The Mayflower Theatre

Tonight at the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, Buddy Holly played a headline show! Not the real Buddy Holly of course but Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, rocked the Mayflower’s stage just as if the man himself was really there. The juke-box style musical written by Alan Janes, takes a name that many people know and adapts the story of his life onto the stage. Now of course juke-box musicals usually get labelled as being cheesy and not particularly everybody’s cup of tea. However, Buddy much like Jersey Boys and Let it Be, remove that label completely and focus on the individual story and celebration of music. And Buddy has done it extremely well. 

Usually with biopic musicals or stories, writers and directors expect the audience to have some common understanding of who the person is – otherwise why would you be there right? Well, one thing that Janes and director Matt Salisbury have done very well is explain Buddy’s story in full detail, so everybody in the audience understands who he is even if you had never heard of him; and not in a patronising way either! Not an easy task. If you do know Buddy’s story, you will know it is also not a very long one (spoiler?). So again, for Janes and Salisbury to stretch out a repeated ’18 month’ story into just a couple of hours, it needed to be done expertly. The show didn’t want to feel slow paced or like it was dragging and one thing the show definitely didn’t feel was slow paced! This musical follows Buddy Holly’s rise to fame and his journey to becoming a rock and roll star, leaving a legacy that the biggest rock and roll musicians credit to him today. It’s funny, heart-warming, and even heart-breaking. All of these things stem from the fantastic cast that intertwine together to bring Buddy Holly and the important people from his story to life. 

It’s Buddy Brilliant!        

… I know I’ll stop.

One thing that really made the show for me was the fact that every cast member was actually playing an instrument or two live on stage! Acting, following directions, listening for cues and even singing is all an art form in itself. Now add musical instruments into the mix. Unbelievable. Each and every cast member should be extremely proud of themselves because what an incredible job and talent. Bravo! Christopher Weeks who played the role of ‘Buddy Holly’ was just sensational. Not only did he look like and portray Buddy with his mannerisms, but his voice. His voice was just phenomenal and we’ve not even mentioned the guitar yet. To try and avoid spoilers I’ll just say that his guitar solos were impeccable and by the end of the night he had everybody on their feet dancing with him. It was like what I can only imagine being at a real Buddy Holly concert would’ve felt like. A true rock star! Another stand-out performance for me had to be from Thomas Mitchells who played the roles of, get ready: ‘Hipockets Duncan’, ‘Decca Producer’, ‘Norman Petty’, ‘DJ at The Apollo Theatre’, ‘Murray Deutch’, and ‘MC at Clearlake’. Six different roles. SIX! The way he controlled the audience was incredible, at certain points there was interaction with the audience and Mitchells just had everything down perfectly. From the accent changes and an added hat or waistcoat, he transformed character without even leaving the stage and basically acted as the narrator of the story. An incredible performance – well done! 

Altogether the cast worked fantastically together and were a really well put together team. I also wanted to give a special shout-out to Joe Butcher (who played the role of ‘Joe B Mauldin’) as what he was doing on the double bass all night was incredible. Although he may have been in the background, at certain moments all eyes were definitely on him.

The set and lighting for the show were simple but great. That’s all it needed to be, after all they were trying to recreate the 50s. Designer, Adrain Rees did an incredible job of transforming the stage to different places just by moving the band instruments around and changing the lighting to suit. A synergy that worked really nicely. One nice touch was the use of a curtain drop at the back of the stage paired with a blackout for the performers to change position, making it seem as if the audience was now on the stage and could see what was happening ‘behind-the-scenes’. Very effective and executed brilliantly. Darren Coopland (lighting designer) certainly didn’t hold back on the lighting during the ‘Clearlake performance’ and the mixed use of old and new lighting really added to the whole feel of the show. As for the music, well it speaks for itself. Musical Director, Dean Elliot made a good choice by using songs from artists other than Buddy to help not only progress the story but set the scene as well. A fantastic idea. 

Unfortunately however, there did seem to be a technical problem with microphones. Any dialogue was incredibly difficult to pick up especially when the stage got busy or music/noise was playing in the background. As the interval came around, I heard many of the audience saying the exact same thing, “Are you struggling to hear too?”. Unfortunately again this problem was not solved during the interval so the same problem occurred for the remainder of the show. Of course these technical issues happen and for the opening night there was always going to be niggles. I must add however, that this did not take away from the music (as those microphones were working fine) and the cast did an extremely good job to power through this problem! Another mention to Thomas Mitchells again as his projection and control in particular was fantastic. For the split of events in the musical, it seems as if Act 1 had much more of a story line than Act 2 had. Act 1 takes us through who Buddy is, his quick rise to fame and his big first performance. Whereas Act 2 shares a little bit more of his personal life before really just becoming a big concert, which was incredible! 

Buddy takes us on a pit-stop tour of Buddy Holly’s short but incredible career and this does mean that his death also needs to be tackled. From a fast paced build up and concert to explaining his death, back to an up-beat happy ending – Janes and Salisbury were extremely classy and intelligent in the way in which they did this. They inflicted all sorts of different emotions onto the audience within the space of three minutes or less. I saw audience members laughing, crying, then up on their feet dancing and singing along within the same three minutes. It was such an uplifting, powerful and inspiring show that I actually left the theatre wanting to stick a Buddy Holly album on and pick up a guitar. The musical has toured the UK for a recored-breaking 556 weeks and has become a worldwide phenomenon. And I can see why! I wish everybody involved in the show all the luck and success they deserve as the musical continues on its UK tour.