EDINBURGH 2018 - Review: WE'VE GOT EACH OTHER, Pleasance Dome

After jukebox musicals became the latest trend in theatre, it was nearly impossible to listen to any greatest hits compilation without dreaming up how it could be adapted into a West End smash hit.

Slap a paper-thin story about a boy and girl, and the forces conspiring to keep them apart, onto some bombastic arrangements and slick choreography, and you get something that will have audiences up and down the country dancing in the aisles in a fit of pop nostalgia.

We've Got Each Other takes its cue from these often formulaic musicals, but with its own spin. It's billed as an "almost entirely imagined Bon Jovi musical" with no band, no costumes, no set or sparkling costumes; simply one man describing the show to you. Peter Brook famously asserted that a man walking across an empty space while someone watched him constituted theatre, but this show manages on even less.

It might sound a strange premise, but it soon becomes evident that the show is about far more than a simple romance between a New York dock worker and a diner waitress. There is some recorded music, and lighting changes to help evoke the epic tragedy of Tommy and Gina, but the rest is left up to narrator Paul O'Donnell to bring to life, all the while quietly encouraging you to think about the relationship between actor and audience, the power of imagination and the escapism of theatre.

O'Donnell is a engagingly contrasting presence in this production; nervy and self-deprecating, yet able to bust out a seated tap routine from behind his script binder; confident in his smash-hit-to-be, yet endearingly eager for the audience to join him in losing themselves in the magic of theatre.

Moments such as a meditation on the existential angst of the interval between acts made his central figure very reminiscent of The Drowsy Chaperone's Man In Chair, with his pernickety passion for the idiosyncrasies of the genre, and dry wit masking a genuine desire for his passion project to connect with the audience. O'Donnell admittedly shows off far superior dance skills!

There is a good deal of comedy here, with some delightful quips scattered throughout, not to mention the irresistible gumption of advertising itself with "an anticipated 12 Olivier nominations". A lot of the humour comes from knowing pokes at the tropes and cliches of musical theatre and, even if you don't feel much of a Bon Jovi aficionado, any fan of contemporary musicals who has ever belted along to "Livin' On A Prayer" will find something to amuse them here.

By the end of an hour with Paul, you are sure to be enthusiastically applauding an invisible curtain call and joking that the sets have to be seen to be believed. Highly entertaining, frequently amusing and cleverly conceived, We've Got Each Other gives the buzz of a full live musical, sending you out the door with a spring in your step and an 80s rock anthem lodged firmly in your head. If your imagination is bursting to conjure up dancing gangs, epic romances and confetti cannons - give it a shot!

We've Got Each Other runs at the Pleasance Dome until 27 August (not 14 or 21)

Photo credit: Simon K Allen

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