Review: Benidorm Live

This is the real deal, the silly campery, saucy seaside postcard humour, the legacy of Carry On taken forward into the 21st century - what's not to love, especially when it's done this well, and the audience reaction proves it.

Benidorm Live - King's Theatre, Glasgow review

As TV to stage adaptations goes, this is the perfect example of how it should be done.

Benidorm Live review, Palace Theatre Manchester

If there's any doubt in the minds of Benidorm fans as to whether or not the long-running, award-winning ITV comedy should be brought back from its shock axing earlier this year as a film, then the Benidorm Live stage show should quash all concerns.

Benidorm Live - Palace Theatre, Manchester review

A riotous night out - especially with a group of friends, and don't worry if you haven't seen the TV show, the plot is super easy to follow and the humour will have you crying with laughter. Benidorm Live is as camp as Christmas!

Theatre review: Benidorm Live!

Times are supposed to have moved on, in British popular culture, from the days when sex was a naughty holiday pastime conjured up in a McGill postcard, and homosexuality a joke patiently played out by John Inman in Are You Being Served; but sometimes, faced with the full-on showbiz energy of a show like Benidorm Live!, at the Playhouse this week, it's possible to wonder whether the changes are much more than skin deep.

Benidorm Live review

Boldly brash - and brazen with it - the live musical version of ITV hit Benidorm combines plenty of recognition for the show's fans with the kind of comedy that would make a panto dame blush.

For sheer flamboyance, there's no beating tubby hairdresser Kenneth (Tony Maudsley), who flounced into the sea as Benidorm (ITV) returned.

He was trying to swim back to the Solana hotel, from an island off the Costa Blanca coast, but only his necklace was washed ashore. Of the rest, nothing was found, not even his silver posing briefs. If he doesn't turn up, it's a clever way to write his character out of the show -- with the possibility of a comeback one day.

Nigel Havers. as the smarmy dentist taking over Kenneth's salon, is smoothly amusing, and the wonderful Janine Duvitski as elderly swinger Jacqueline is back.

But most of the best-loved Benidorm regulars have long since departed, and the show has a decrepit air, like a cheap hotel at the tail-end of the season.

Full marks, though, to a hilarious cameo from Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley, sending himself up as a shameless narcissist churning out the band's hits at a wedding. That was pure Gold.

Casting announced for Benidorm - Live

Litten has written an all new set of Alicante escapades for the much-loved cast members, including Jake Canuso (Mateo), Janine Duvitski (Jacqueline), Adam Gillen (Liam), Sherrie Hewson (Joyce Temple-Savage), Shelley Longworth (Sam), and Tony Maudsley (Kenneth) as they swap sangria for the stage next year after a quick spruce at the Blow 'n' Go!

More misunderstandings in the Spanish sun. Kenneth (Tony Maudsley) starts a taxi business by mistake, while Joyce (Sherrie Hewson) worries about her boss discovering that she can't speak Spanish, and Joey (Nathan Bryon) thinks a trip to Ibiza is free when it isn't. Mainly, though, we're wondering if randy wrinkly Nana Chase (former Brookside star Kate Fitzgerald) has really slept with a 20-year-old. It's fine, but it's half an hour of sitcom in an hour-long slot.