BWW Reviews: NEXT THING YOU KNOW, Landor Theatre, May 21 2013

What with all the deliberating about whether to pursue an acting career over a full-time job as a lawyer, or whether to move to LA or stay in NYC, Next Thing You Know should be really be renamed #FirstWorldProblems.

Despite the lack of any jeopardy whatsoever (the writers even admit in the programme notes the songs came before the story) NTKY is actually pretty accurate in portraying the worries and dissatisfaction of people in their late twenties going through 'the quarter-life crisis'.

We, I mean they, are the ones who realise it's time to grow up, stop smoking/acting like a kid and face up to the fact that maybe your dream of playing the lead in Wicked at the Royal Variety Show just ain't gonna happen. Gulp.

As a comedy musical, a couple of the songs could be struck or shortened; 'And I Breathe', a song about whether to give up smoking, was particularly random.

There were, however, some stand-out tunes particularly 'Hung-over' which has the audience in stitches, 'How about You,' which sums up the expression 'awkward turtle', and 'Morning After Omelette,' a peculiar ditty about eating eggs after doing the dirty.

The four leads share equal billing and are all good singers with tones of enthusiasm. The boys, Darren and Luke (played by Bart Edwards and Aaron Lee Lambert) bounce really well off each other providing some brilliant comic moments in the offices of 'Creative 360'.

Amelia Cormack as Lisa provides some much-needed home truths as by the middle of the second Act I was getting very bored of Waverley's (Jennifer Potts) continued navel-gazing.

The use of space, staging and musicians were all excellent as we have come to expect at the Landor.

By the end of NTYK I thought writers Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham had provided a refreshing and funny take on the musical genre. They've penned random yet catchy songs, cheesy but without a fake ending. It's as real to real life you'll get whilst people are re-enacting their middle-class nightmares via the medium of song.

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