Everyone knows who the Monkees are, even 40 years after they were at their prime young and old alike (and celebrity sighting of the evening, Dev from Corrie,) gathered to immerse ourselves in the splendour of the flare-wearing original boy-band.
It took a little while to get into the tone of the musical, wondering at first if the extraordinarily cheesy jokes were serious until it became wonderfully clear that the whole thing had been masterminded as one tongue-in-cheek self-mocking joke after another.
The premise of the musical being that four ordinary boys, with no actual musical talent of their own but a penchant for miming, were recruited to go on a world tour in place of the real Monkees who were busy filming their hit TV series.
With constant references to the band’s lives and some exquisitely unsubtle links into their hit songs, often led into by phrases like “Bet you didn’t think we’d sing this song in this scene”, the whole evening reflected the nature of the Monkees careers as the happy go lucky hit-making machine of the ‘60s.
It was an all-round brilliant evening that left you feeling exactly as you should after a musical of this ilk; sore-faced from laughing with all your worries behind you, the miracle healing of cheesy and frequently filthy jokes.
There was a touching moment to finish the evening, as Ben Evans who played Chuck, posing as Davy Jones, took to the stage after the encore to dedicate the evening to the memory of the late singer, at which the rest of the cast returned to the stage and the audience rose to their feet to sing and bring the evening to a close.
