I'm a peace-loving soul but whoever invented the musical medley should be forced to wear padlocked headphones through which a never ending silage of song snippets should be fed until they are, well, dead. Perhaps that's a bit strong. But I do hope that they, and for that matter pliers of that banal form of popular music known easy listening find themselves trapped in a lift playing muzak until they are, well, dead.
This apparently happened to Spike Milligan once. He didn't die, but when they finally managed to prize open the doors of the lift in which he had been trapped for hours, they found him clutching the speakers that, up until the moment he had ripped them form the walls, had been playing a stream of soulless plinkety plonk inanity.
The medley is to music what bubble gum is to food. Stringing together great songs by segueing one into another is like dumping beautifully cooked dinner courses onto one plate. Like food, each serving of a song needs its own space to be consumed and digested. Appreciated. So fears for Burt Bacharach's catalogue - here "reimagined" by Canadian singer songwriter Kyle Riabko and his band - soared when a little bit of Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head dribbled out of the back end this show's title song.
Yet the plusses of this New York import are at least as conspicuous as the minuses. The mood is cosy. The Menier auditorium has been draped in a smorgasbord of carpet and fabrics that make the place feel like someone's sitting room complete. There are even sofas.
