9 to 5 The Musical

9 to 5 The Musical

Produced by Landmark Theatres at Ipswich Regent Theatre
A review written for Suffolk Theatre

It was our first visit to Ipswich’s Regent Theatre since the refurbishment project, a complete overhaul of the front of house spaces - which is absolutely marvelous and a huge improvement on the previous. Unfortunately on this occasion we did not enjoy the show we were here to see.

Let’s start with the good, though, because there was some. The cast were superb, throwing themselves into the demanding choreography and singing all their lines with passion and energy. It was really nice to see such a large chorus on stage supporting the leads too, their harmonies were always pleasant. Credit to the band too, the music was brilliantly played, though I would say it was somewhat of a shame for them to be hidden at the back of the set behind flats, so we could only see their heads occasionally.

Further unfortunately, the sound mix was completely off and any time the band were in full swing they were pretty much drowning out the lyrics of the songs entirely, ditto for when everyone on stage was singing at once, it became impossible to hear anything of the actual words. It could be a Regent-specific issue, I’ve had trouble hearing musicals here before, or it could be a first night issue - either way, for a lot of the show I was just listening to the melodies, completely unable to discern any of the words.

This became a problem because, contrary to my expectation of this being a jukebox musical of Dolly Parton’s hits, so that I might have some chance of recognising a few of them - my wife, with me tonight, is the Dolly fan, not me; these are original songs for the story, so a lot of their storytelling power was completely lost. As a result I found it very hard to care about anything that was happening on the stage, nor was I able to really follow the intentions of the songs, as passionately as they were being sung.

The bits of the story I was able to hear were laughably ridiculous, and not in a “this is a comedy show, it’s funny” sort of way, but more of a patently expositional, breakneck speed rollercoaster progression and equally abrupt resolutions. There were also a few times it felt like the script was trying way too hard to hammer on a particular point, for example telling us at least five times that one of the main characters’ husband had ‘left her for his secretary!’ There were a lot of repeated “jokes” that weren’t even funny the first time, so by the fourth they were just words, but overall for a supposed comedy musical, it just wasn’t particularly humourous.

The set and staging were also incredibly plain, with simple backgrounds and two giant rolling panels that served zero purpose other than the one major and bizarre scene change to a hospital in a section of the story that snapped open and closed again in a matter of minutes. The lighting was dull and uninteresting for the most part, aside from a few colour changes there wasn’t a lot that it was adding to the very bare open stage, and for a lot of the show there was a wall of foggy haze that was swirling uselessly in the plain white wash lights. The cast were left drowning in so much empty space and the few times they made use of the simple levels of the set, it was far too brief.

Act one felt extremely long, and I was sat in my seat cringing for pretty much the entirety of it, so it was a mercy when the interval arrived. Act two was pacier, and that might have been part of what helped the one song that I felt starting to approach a proper musical number for a production like this, even if I still couldn’t hear a lot of the lyrics, and the setting of the scene was another moment of confusing origin.

As previously noted, the story wrapped up in the “finale” incredibly swiftly, and there was no real satisfaction for any of the few story threads it tied up, but frankly we were just glad it was the end of the show. From the sounds of things though, we may well have been in a minority as there were plenty of people in the audience who were cheering and applauding heartily at the end of each song, a few of them even tried to get a standing ovation going, but it didn’t happen until the final reprise of the titular song inviting the audience to get up and dance. We instead took the opportunity to leave.

As we were walking out, we heard Dolly’s voice jovially saying something along the lines of “if you enjoyed the show please tell someone; and if you didn’t, just keep your mouth shut” … Would that I could, Dolly - sorry.

🕘🕔 / 5

(9 to 5 on the clocks, but only 2 stars from me)

Performances continue at Ipswich Regent until Saturday 22 August, the show continues on tour for a few more weeks.
Find out more and book tickets at https://9to5musical.co.uk/

I was offered tickets in exchange for my honest review of the show. I purchased my own programme.
This invite came to me via Suffolk Theatre - an edited version of this review is available there, it is shared in full here with their permission.