Review: 'One Hit Wonders' New Revue at Stage West

Presenting over sixty number-one hits spanning four decades in a little over two hours, One Hit Wonders can sometimes leave you feeling like you have just seen a very long commercial for one of those K-Tel record collections. You recognize all the tunes but may have trouble recalling a specific performance when all is said and sung.

Howard Pechet and Timothy French have created a nostalgic trip for boomers who grew up with many of these songs on 45-rpm records. The theme that links it all together is that the original artists failed to score any subsequent successes.

Even someone who has never followed the pop music charts will recognize most of the songs on the play list. Oh, there I go again using a radio term. After thirty years in the business it’s perhaps unavoidable. It’s also hard not to hear a series of songs run together in a long medley and question the sequence.

A former program director coined the phrase “too much of a muchness” whenever the programming was getting a bit relentless. In other words too many of the same types of songs all in a row. It’s a pitfall that Pechet and French don’t entirely avoid.

They also don’t avoid allowing the narration to occasionally become a bit condescending. Whenever a performer asks the audience “How are you all doing tonight,” you know somebody doesn’t have a lot to say. When they do have some trivia to share it comes across as if the performer is saying “I’ll be you dummies didn’t know this.”

That’s the trouble: Many of us grew up with these songs and know all about them.  The trick is to present the info breaks (oops another radio term) in a casual entertaining style and not as if a test were looming at the end of the evening.

There is no test. Just an ovation for a fantastically talented group of diverse singers and dancers exuding enough energy to warm all of Mississauga on a cold winter’s night.

 

One Hit Wonders plays Tuesdays to Sundays at Stage West Dinner Theatre until February 7. Call the box office at (905) 238-0042 to reserve the dinner/show packages.

 

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