Fantastic celebration of 80s music promised in new show starring Sonia
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It plays Theatre Royal Brighton from December 2-7 and then Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre from January 14-18, the tale of two school friends Gemma and April. In Birmingham 1989 they are busy with very important business – planning their lives based on Number One Magazine quizzes and dreaming of snogging Rick Astley. Cut to Birmingham 2009 and it’s the most dreaded event of their lives – the school reunion.
In the second half, as a kind of fairy godmother, Sonia comes on, playing herself – and singing her hits: “I have done three shows so far, in Cardiff and Newcastle and Milton Keynes and it is just a blast,” Sonia says. “The audiences are absolutely loving it. They love the songs. They are all belters from the NOW compilations. They know all the songs inside out, word for word but with the songs they've got a brand-new story which entwines around the songs, these two girls that went to school together and then went on different paths in their lives. One wanted to go to Hollywood and the other just wanted to stay in Birmingham.
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Hide Ad“The songs are fantastic and the choreography from Craig is brilliant. When I'm sitting in my dressing room I have the tanoy on and also the screen so that I can see it. I don't want to miss it. Sometimes you're in a dressing room just waiting for your bit to come up but with this show, I am always so engrossed in it every night. The humour is fantastic but it touches everybody's heartstrings because there are such dramatic bits as well as the humour and it is just also so uplifting.
“I play myself. Gemma really, really loves me and loves my music. She's got pictures of me on her bedroom wall but she goes through hard times throughout the journey of her life. I come in towards the end and I'm a fairy godmother giving her advice.
“The songs are all brilliant. They just take you back. You think of where you were when you first heard them, and we all go back to our childhood and our youth when we hear them. It is two and a half hours of nostalgia, a celebration of the 80s. We have got such fantastic songs from people like Blondie and Tears For Fears but the music director has changed some of the songs. He has slowed some of them down and you realise how beautiful these songs are. We do Heart Of Glass and we slow it right down and we also do Everybody Wants To Rule The World, slowed down and you really appreciate the beauty of the songs when you do them like that. And it just shows how brilliant the 80s were.”
Sonia will be singing one of the songs that made her a NOW icon, Better The Devil You Know, the song she sang in the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing second.
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Hide Ad“I was chuffed that the BBC asked me to do it and when we were picking the songs I did it a show with Terry Wogan every week. I was signed to Simon Cowell, and when Better The Devil You Know came up, the switchboard just went crazy. Simon said it just had to be that one. But I was devastated when I was pipped at the post by just one vote. On the night I thought we might win but it wasn't to be. It was a fantastic achievement. We came so close.”
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