The Simon and Garfunkel Story, The Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich. September 2015.
I've been a fan of Simon and Garfunkel's music for as long as I can remember, influenced probably by my parents who had a lot of their music as I was growing up. If I ever had the chance to go in a time machine their concert in Central Park in 1981 would be one of my first destinations - along with the Queen tour of 1986 - how shallow am I???
My companion and I weren't sure what we'd be experiencing at this show, another friend had seen it recently and was positive so we were hopeful. We were pretty much the youngest in the audience and our seat neighbour was borderline rude about C but we weren't that bothered as we were there for the show/music.
It is a very simple format, two men sing the songs of Simon and Garfunkel with the support of a drummer, keyboard player and bassist. A screen is visible behind the musicians and this shows a montage of images and films that reflect the music, America of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and also images of the duo themselves. Simple but effective.
The voices of the two performers were pretty much perfect - if you shut your eyes you could easily convince yourself that you had the originals in front of you. Even with your eyes open the pair had the mannerisms down pat and it was a surreal watch.
I loved every minute of this evening, it was like a sedate rock concert - fab music, lots of chance to hum along and I knew every song except two. I loved that the songs were interspersed with little anecdotes about the duo or their music and that although it was a very affectionate telling of their story it also didn't gloss over some of the problems.
Both of us wanted there to be more than one performance, and I think that we'd have booked straightaway to see this again - rumour has it that it may be back in Norfolk early in 2016, I think we'll be there!
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