The novelist and screenwriter David Nicholls is “hard to avoid” at the moment, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. A new screen adaptation of his 2009 bestseller One Day has become a huge hit on Netflix; his forthcoming novel You Are Here is hotly anticipated; and his 2003 debut, Starter for Ten, which was filmed in 2006, has now been turned into a feel-good stage musical. The show, which has just premiered at the Bristol Old Vic, is not an “epic masterpiece”, but it’s colourful and stirring, offers oodles of 1980s musical nostalgia, and looks set to reach a wider audience.
The story concerns Brian, a working-class youth from Essex who has won a place to read English literature at Bristol University and is now desperate to be selected for its University Challenge team. Cleverly scripted by Charlie Parham and Emma Hall, the musical “has the energy levels of a freshers’ foam party and the cuteness of a first-term romance”, said Rosemary Waugh in The Stage.
Everything is staged with confidence and brio, agreed Charlotte Jones on What’s on Stage, and the cast is top-notch. Adam Bregman is charming as Brian; Emily Lane, as posh love interest Alice, dazzles with her operatic talent; while Will Jennings is hysterical as the nerdy team captain Patrick.
“Some of the characterisation is too broad,” said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian: “Mel Giedroyc, as Brian’s mother, is an especially generic Essex caricature.” But Brian is more textured, and his “push and pull” with Sloaney Alice and Rebecca (Eubha Akilade), a “sarky Glaswegian” student protester, gives the story “class satire and comic bite”. The music, by Hatty Carman and Tom Rasmussen, is “infused with synth sounds and musical debts to the likes of New Order and Eurythmics”, and the songs are energetic and funny. It’s a pity that, in the second half, the anarchic comedy veers into “unhinged”, and a series of not very catchy songs rather distracts from the story. A change to Nicholls’s original ending also feels like a jarring mistake. But until you get to that point, this is “a very fun ride”.