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STAGE: The Glitter Girls – Rhumbelow Theatre at Tina’s Hotel in Kloof
(6.30pm on Friday and Saturday, September 3 and 4, and 2pm on Sunday, September 5)
REVIEW BY BILLY SUTER
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HAVING been scheduled for a revival shortly before Covid-19 first raised its ugly head in March 2020, this featherlight and wonderfully joyous show, which took the 2014 Durban Theatre Award for Best Musical Revue, finally returns to the Durban stage.
It played to very enthusiastic audiences last weekend at the Umbilo Rhumbelow Theatre audiences and this weekend has final performances at the Rhumbelow’s branch at Kloof’’s Tina’s Hotel, where performances are at 6.30pm today and tomorrow and 2pm on Sunday.
Tickets cost R160 each and booking is at Computicket or by calling Roland Stansell at 082 499 8636.
This production truly comes highly recommended and good news is that some new songs have now been added to the show. There are also some new costumes and a few topical updates in the quirky narrative, which now offers sideline nods to not only Covid-19 but also the recent KwaZulu-Natal unrest.
The revue centres on three longtime pals – played by the ever-ebullient trio of Lisa Bobbert, Liesl Coppin and Marion Loudon, all of them former Durban Theatre Personality of the Year award-winners – who are former mischievous pupils of Scottburgh High School, attending the 30th reunion of their senior class.
At the reunion, the women, who once formed an ’80s vocal covers group called The Glitter Girls, meet up with old colleagues, friends, foes, former beaus and teachers (Aaron McIlroy and Lisa Bobbert provide the voices of the amusing unseen staff).
The three friends mark their arrival with a rendition of the current Dua Lipa hit, Levitating (a new addition to the show) and, after amusing gossip and remarks on how their former colleagues have changed over the decades, they take a time flip.
They leave the stage as modern women to quickly return, in school uniforms, as their teen selves, leading to girlish pranks and banter revolving around matters of the heart. This all unfolds between songs that include hits by Bananarama, Bonnie Tyler, Eurythmics, Abba and Pink, among others.
The second half has the women performing as the men from their past at the reunion –among them the bald, retiring and unlucky-in-love, former head boy John (Loudon in bald cap) and the successful, rotund and bearded Reuben (Bobbert, who gets to breakdance in character).
Then there’s the standout – the groovy, eye-rollingly flirtatious deadbeat Kenny, who lives in a Wendy House in his mom’s garden and still thinks he’s a babe magnet (a well-deserved, Durban Theatre Award-winning performance by Coppin, sporting wandering moustache and glittery fright wig).
The show’s second half is laden with hilarity and more modern songs, performed solo or as a trio, which include hits by Rihanna, David Guetta and Bruno Mars, among others, as well as a fun delivery of The Weather Girls classic, It’s Raining Men.
If you have not yet seen The Glitter Girls, please do yourself a big favour and book now. If you have seen it, you know you will want to book again. It’s truly a sparkler of note!
.....SoSuterBill..... 