FLAMENC OH!!
Peacock Theatre
★★★
“A talented company with a worthwhile idea”
Flamenc-Oh!! starts strong. Carlos Chamorro’s choreography displays the performers’ wonderful talents. David Bastidas sings and struts as the patriarch, hat and cane at the ready. Raquel Ortega is commanding as the matriarch in a black dress. Their young adult children, Anabel Moreno, flaming in red, and Raúl Ortega hammer the floor with real authority. Luis Gallo is the long-haired guitarist, newly returned from travelling the world. His guitar playing is a marvel, fast and exact. The first stretch seems to be building a show with a pulse.
The premise is sound: the older generation of a flamenco family guards the old ways, their children wait to take the baton. Passing tradition to the next generation is the story flamenco has always told about itself, and it is rich enough to carry eighty minutes.
Sadly, it does not get the chance. Directors David Ottone and Juan Ramos let the evening slide into broad, pratfall slapstick, which is particularly incongruous when performed by such talented dancers.
What possibilities are ignored! A guitarist who has seen the world and come home is an open door to the story of how his travels changed the music. Riverdance made a virtue of exploring the influences Irish dance borrows from other cultures. Flamenco has far better material. Its North African inheritance runs through Andalusian music. The Latin American tail wags the dog, with rhythms crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, reshaping the form. Despite starting the show with the well-travelled guitarist, there was no mention of how the spread of Spanish culture carried flamenco round the world. The listings promise a ‘mash-up’ between flamenco and other music. But that isn’t delivered. Extracts of the usual crowd-pleasers, like Purple Rain, are inserted as diversions.
Even the cross-dressing subplot felt gratuitous, when it could have drawn on real flamenco history: Carmen Amaya dancing in trousers, or Manuel Liñán’s men in the bata de cola. Instead, it was played as yet another gag.
The staging is effective (set by Carlos Brayda, costumes by Tatiana de Sarabia, lighting by Juani González Vega). The lighting is used well in encouraging audience participation.
At the curtain call the cast urged the audience to its feet. Was this an invitation to dance? No. A stagehand appeared with a camera to video this manufactured standing ovation. Flamenco prizes duende, that sudden, spontaneous surge of feeling. Here we had the opposite.
A talented company with a worthwhile idea plays for laughs it doesn’t need. More dancing, less gimmickry, and this would be a fantastic show.
FLAMENC OH!!
Peacock Theatre
Reviewed on 30th September 2026
by Elizabeth Botsford
Photography by Pablo Lorente
