THE COMMITMENTS AND THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY

Over the last few weeks I have seen two musicals – The Buddy Holly Story and The Commitments. After making a conscious decision to start exploring both Cheltenham and Southampton, both the Everyman and Mayflower are theatres with a lot going on.

My first venture out to the Everyman in Cheltenham was to see the Buddy Holly Story, they have a brilliant scheme called the 16-25 tickets, which you apply for and cost £5. It isn’t on every production but when they have spare seats they allocate them at random – so for my £5 I got an excellent stall seat that was a good view (even if I did go on my own). The theatre itself is lovely and much smaller than I imagined, but then I seem to either spend time in small 250 seat theatres or large West End style venues, so having something in the middle is unusual.

The Buddy Holly Story was a bit of an impulse buy, I must admit. I was scrolling down the different musicals that were on and this one seemed to lift my interest enough to go for it. If you don’t already know, the story is about Buddy Holly’s career (and I for one, didn’t know ANYTHING about his career before going to this musical, heck I didn’t even know what music he created!). However, I was quite confidently blown away, it was an easy story and not one that I had to think too much about, plus because I didn’t know, the ending was even more shocking. The music was good, and my favourite song was probably ‘Everyday’, I just kept singing it afterwards.

Conversely, in Southampton at the Mayflower, I went to go and see The Commitments. The theatre was much bigger and arguably much more impressive (although the bar was impossible to get to as there were so many people hanging around). I’d love to say I knew what I was going into when I saw this musical but I was equally as mystified as I couldn’t find all that much information about it online, just that it had some quite recognisable songs. The story is about a band called The Commitments, and it is also based off of a novel (I believe) – whereby a lad called Jimmy wants to set up a band and he successfully brings one together (with their fair share of fall outs and arguments).

My favourite song for that one was probably Knock on Wood, but then I do love it when Emma Stone sings it in Easy A so I might be more biased than I might otherwise be. The other songs that featured were Mustang Sally, Heard it on the Grapevine – it was excellent and the singing/acting of the cast was unbelievable. There was a rather amusing bit where the main character decided to get changed on stage (he wasn’t bad looking, I must admit) … all the women got rather excited and there were rather a few wolf whistles!

The similarities between the two musicals in my opinion, is that they are both about the up and coming nature of bands, the hardships and the fall outs between band mates – however at the same time it shows the friendship and how sometimes if you get through that rubbish it has a happy ending. On the other hand, they were quite different in the music – Buddy Holly was quite rock and roll/country, and it was very American, whereas the Commitments was set in Dublin and was very Irish!