What I liked
If you are a fan of musicals, you will enjoy this show. If you like rock musicals in particular, you will adore this show. If you are fan of The Clash, you will love this show. You might love it even if you are none of these things! It’s a super entertaining evening of theater that had me smiling and tapping my feet all the way through. There’s so much good about it, I don’t know if I can mention everything. The acting and singing – great. The choreography – loads of fun. The staging of the whole show – extremely creative. What they did here is take The Clash’s music and create a story line around it, so that the songs tell the story. The way they integrated the songs into the story was terrific. In several instances, they manipulated the arrangement of the song so it fit the story line better, and it worked beautifully. The show is extremely well-paced. Lots of humor intersperses the action. The actor/singers are all thoroughly immersed in their characters and some play multiple roles. Special mention to the two punk rock “chorus” girls who enhanced every scene they were in even though they weren’t the main characters. They gave 110% and the audience loved it. All the songs were well staged, and some of them were brilliant. I enjoyed every musical number, and some standouts for me were “Lost in the Supermarket” and “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” and I have to say I never saw a more entertaining version of “Rock The Casbah.” It had me laughing my ass off. I could go on and on about this musical, but you really should just go see it. It’s a fantastic rock n’ roll show. I left the theater feeling very happy!
What I didn't like
This has nothing to do with the production, but this is the second musical I saw in the same space at the Hudson Theater and it had the same sound problems as the other show. The sound quality is poor. The music is loud enough, but some of the singers mics were too low to hear the lyrics over the music. The mix of vocals and music was not good in either show. What helped London Calling was that I knew the songs, so missing some lyrics wasn’t terrible, but still it’s not the quality I wanted it to be. The Hudson really needs to update their mics or sound mixing if they are going to present musicals. I look forward to seeing this show again if it moves to another venue where the sound quality will be better.
My overall impression
A fast paced, thoroughly entertaining Rock N’ Roll musical featuring the terrific music of The Clash.
