Rhinestone Mondays

Musicals are polarizing things. You either know all the lines to 'I Could Have Danced All Night' or you don't. Country music can also divide people, and Dolly Parton is either celebrated as a second mother or an utterly perplexing individual with a lot of hair. The expression of emotion onstage set to music can be a moving experience or an alienating one. Somehow, these two elements come together in Rhinestone Mondays by Joe Graham.

Directed by Phil Willmot this show teeters on the verge of failure for ninety minutes. Rhinestone Mondays, like many muscials, is about love. Tom (Andy Topham) is divorced, and goes to Brian’s (Shaun Williamson) unpopular pub to sing John Denver songs on the karaoke machine until Annie (Faye Tozer – yes, Faye from Steps) and her line-dancing class, including Duncan (Ian Watson - H from Steps!) intrude upon him one evening. Hijinks, as they say, ensue.

Whether you enjoy Rhinestone Mondays is contingent on whether you think the director and cast are being serious or not. The choreography is comically childish, but also cleverly ironic in that it would be the same simple choreography that a neglected line-dancing group would come up with. The stage setting is basic, but then you would expect that from a bar in south England which no one visits. The plot is almost invisible - it builds to a vague promise of a line-dancing competition in Bognor Regis but does not deliver.

Topham and Tozer are exceptionally good at playing divorcees, but their story dominates the stage at the expense of the other characters. The diamond in the rough is Shaun Williamson, aka Barry from EastEnders, who gives this otherwise flat production a little support. His stage presence is unique and untouchable, because he is the only performer who fleshes out his character into a man we can sympathize with for two hours. The others bring the laughs, but Williamson brings the heart.