Movin' Out - the Billy Joel musical

L'il Garders shows the way to go

It all seemed so simple. It's Daniel's birthday. He likes Billy Joel. There's a new Billy Joel musical in town, featuring 24 (count 'em!) of his biggest hits. Let's book the tickets right here! Surely it'll be just like Mamma Mia or We Will Rock You - a romp through all your favourite classic hits, with some "plot" loosely linking them together, right?

Wrong. A few days later, Beccy, who knows about these things, says "you do know who Twyla Tharp is, don't you? This will be Billy Joel expressed through the medium of contemporary dance." And with that, our faces fell, and we saw the price of a dozen lagers wandering off into the pockets of Ticketmaster.


The birthday boy looks forward excitedly to the show in The Cardinal, Victoria

And so, last Thursday, we were at the Apollo Victoria for Movin' Out. And it's difficult to know where to start. The last time I saw anything like this, it was at the University of Essex theatre. And for every moment where it felt like a pretentious piece of student angst, there was one where it felt like we were on a cruise ship watching the Ents team putting together a "Seaside Special" review. Add in some U-S-A, U-S-A flag-waving, and you get the picture.

I'll confess to owning a Billy Joel Greatest Hits compilation (though it does have a "not for re-sale" sticker still on it) but the even the piano man's best work can't save this, as any subtlety gets lost in the bombastic arrangements. And this is before I've even got on to the bizarre S&M bondage scene somewhere in the middle where a Mother and young son walked out...

The audience - if not our group - were divided. The people behind us whooped and hollared for more - and probably hated the row of cynical meejah hacks in front of them who made sarcastic comments throughout and burst out laughing at several points. Some walked out at the interval; we went back for more - perhaps just to check we had actually seen in the first half what we thought we had.

For Joel fans, just getting drunk and dancing around the front room to Greatest Hits will provide a better experience. Maybe this was all just too American for the English palate: the campaign for a UK singer-songwriter show "Up The Junction - The Squeeze Musical" starts today...


TCMJ and Beccy recreate some of the moves from the show