There’s a message floatin’ in the air. Crazy horses ridin’ everywhere.

This had to be one of the most surreal experiences in all my years of Musical Theatre audiences, witnessing Osmond Mania at The New Alexander Theatre, Birmingham.

The Osmonds Musical is the brainchild of Middle Osmond, Jay, and tells the story of 60 years in 2 hours 20. An impossible task, of course, but Jay Osmond has done a decent job of getting across what it was all about.

Now I’m not that knowledgeable about the band as although at school in the 1970s, I was male, and that made a difference. Sure, I saw the crowds on TV, plus the reactions on Top of the Pops, and read Look-In each week. What I do understand, though, it was like the mania surrounding the Beatles a decade earlier. And I saw a fair bit of mania in the theatre.

I’m won’t go over the plot, check Wikipedia for the history of the band. What I can say is even for the uneducated, the show delivered a good feel for events of the relative times. We had aspiring dreams, euphoria, success, and rebuilding when it all went wrong. What the show said, though, was that The Osmonds were a tight unit, and family was more important than anything.

And then there were the songs. 30 … Yes 30 massive numbers. Okay, some had edited treatment, but the big tunes were there. One Bad Apple, Love Me for a Reason, Down by the Lazy River, Yo-Yo, Crazy Horses, Double Lovin’, Goin’ Home, The Proud One, Hold Her Tight and One Way Ticket to Anywhere. All of these were top drawer as were the solo Osmonds with Puppy Love, Paper Roses and Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.

The band were Alex Lodge (Jay), Ryan Anderson (Merrill), Jamie Chatterton (Alan), Tristan Whincup (Donny), Danny Nattrass (Wayne) with Georgia Lennon as Marie. All were amazing in vocals, reproduction so good, you could not tell the difference between them and the real thing. Charlie Allen and Nicola Bryan also gave strong performances as parents, George and Olive Osmond.

Also featured heavily were the Osmonds as Children: Miles Redwood (Jay), Jayden Harris (Alan), Dexter Seaton (Merrill), Austin Redwood (Wayne), Herbie Byers (Donny) and Austin Riley (Jimmy) were all excellent where involved.

The book was by Julian Bigg and Shaun Kerrison (also directing) with added material from Bosse Anderson and Anders Albien. The only criticism was I found the Jay narratives broke the flow at times and didn’t add much, if I’m honest. Choreography was by Bill Deamer with musical direction from Will Joy.

I mentioned at the start about the mania and even though this was a Jukebox retelling, we had people passing out. In all my years I have only had a production halted once while I was on stage and never when in the audience. October 25, it happened twice, once in each Act, and with people on the same row but not connected to one another. Now I have a scientific theory which could be rubbish but it’s all I can come up with. The audience were mostly 60+ and back in the Osmonds heyday, these would have been the screaming teens of Osmond Mania. Maybe some kind of retro hysteria took them back in time and let’s face it, older bodies cannot cope as they might have in 1972. It’s just a thought and I hope the two unfortunates were okay. It was strange though.

Apart from that, a great night out and even if you weren’t much of a fan, this was a good show. The production is touring the UK the rest of 2022 with further dates to be added next year. Well worth a night out.

Cheers.

Antony N Britt