Bromance: The Dudesical

The Other Palace

Reviewed – 18th October 2018

★★★★

“a gut-bustingly hilarious pop rock musical”

Brush up on your brocabulary because we’re heading to guyville. A place of bros, dudes, beer and chilli cheese fries. Bromance: The Dudesical is a gut-bustingly hilarious pop rock musical. It follows the story of Tom (Cellen Chugg Jones), Dick (Robbie Smith) and Harry (Richard J Hunt); three bros doing bro things. But on St Patricks day they come across Marty (Joshua Gannon), the opposite of a bro. We follow their quest of taking Marty on the road of bro.

First, I want to say, this show is brilliant. The music by Kyle Ewalt is genius. What starts off as a pop rock musical, skilfully glides through a plethora of music influences, from Disco to Country to Jazz. The lyrics by Michael Ian Walker and Kyle Ewalt are well crafted and add an additional layer of humour to the already hilarious script. My particular song favourite was ‘Heartburn’ performed by Harry.

With the wonderful material in play, the execution is pivotal. The five member cast succeeded in that regard. They are strong, full of energy and committed to what they are doing. Their energy pulsates throughout the entire fun, silly and irreverent two hour show; particularly in the stylised choreography. All were excellent, but the leading front bro for me was Robbie Smith as Dick. He is unstoppable in this role, creating a fully realised bro, commanding the stage and delivering the role with such humour and precision. A special mention must also go to Esme Laudat who faultlessly picks up all the female roles.

Despite everything that is going for this show, there are a few areas that need working on. There were a couple of stumbles with staging and words, and with the calibre of material and talent on stage, I expected better. The sound (Joe Morris) needs serious work; the mics of the performers seemed to cut in and out quite regularly and when they did work, the balance didn’t seem right, so you could hear some but not others. On a more positive note, the set design (Dan Gillingwater) in the small studio space of The Other Palace was very clever.

Bromance: The Dudesical is excellent. It has its problems, but they are easily fixable. I came out of The Other Palace, feeling uplifted by this show. Go check it out, bro.

Reviewed by Shaun Dicks

Photography by  Andy Keelan

Bromance: The Dudesical

The Other Palace until 24th October

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Eugenius! | ★★★★ | February 2018

Suicide | ★★★½ | May 2018

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