Irresistibly rated 🍯🍯🍯🍯🍯
An absolutely electrifying show. The Bee was full of child-like wonder at how immersive it was. As you can see from the Bee's videos of the curtain call and the view of the stage pre-performance and during the interval, you couldn't help but feel that you were right in the middle of the action!
A veritable achievement of theatre creative technology. (Spoiler ahead) How do you make a car on stage appear to be moving at 60 mph (which is essential to trigger the time travel technology built into the car)? You use special effects, the best that technology can accomplish! That's exactly what you see on the stage, except that it's nothing like watching a car at full speed on a TV or movie screen. This is immersive theatre at its best. With electrifying music accompanying what feels like a thrilling roller coaster ride, the Bee found herself at the edge of the seat as Marty McFly drove the car through time.
Back to the Future is a funny, charming show with instantly likeable and peculiar characters. It induces a feel-good nostalgia for 80s and 90s kids who can't help but clap and laugh with joy at the jokes of that era. The scientist fits the standard movie stereotype - a genius completely ignorant and misinformed about popular culture and contemporary teenage vernacular that the show relies on to make the audience laugh. Although not a new, previously un-encountered character archetype, our scientist is still able to elicit the audience's affection due to his own affection and empathy for the absolutely lovable Marty McFly. The characters love each other and you love them for loving each other.
The Bee can't get enough of time travel disasters and jokes. The Bee's favourite era-specific slang joke? (Big joke spoiler ahead) Every time Marty comes into a difficult or complicated situation, he says "wow, that's heavy" and the doctor doesn't understand what exactly is 'heavy' and wonders if there is an issue with the gravitational pull of the earth in the 80s. And that character in the 50s who said "Who the hell is John F Kennedy?". So funny to the Bee (the Bee does have a very odd sense of humour, she has been told countless times.)
All in all, it made for a memorable, funny and charming evening filled with nostalgia and amazement at how far technology has come. Back to the Future's Olivier award for Best New Musical is extremely well-deserved.
Five stars!
Watched 24 April 2022 at the Adelphi Theatre, London.
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