• Home
• What's On
  • Highlights - the blondes & their songs
  • Four Flat Whites In Italy
  • Up North
  • Writing a Stage Play with Roger Hall
  • Dead Tragic
  • The Cape
  • Penalties, Pints and Pirouettes
• Centrepoint News
  • Audience Comments
  • Current Reviews
  • Reviews Archive
• Support Us
  • Season Passes
  • Theatre Angels
  • Sponsors
• About Us
  • Box Office
    • FAQ
  • EducationLink
• Contact Us

• Book Now
• Ticket Prices
• Dinner and Show
• Season Passes
• donations
• E-Letter
• Gift Vouchers
• Review
• corporate deals

Dead Tragic

by Michael Nicholas Williams

directed by Kate Louise Elliott

Gloomy songlist is dead clever

Reviewed by Tina White for The Manawatu Standard, Monday July 12, 2010

A musical based on songs about death? Yes, it's different.

And to tell the truth, I had a moment at the top of the show when I had that "what the . . . ?" thought.

But somehow the five performers pull off Dead Tragic in such a way that, by the end, you're not only hugely entertained, but you want more. I think the show could stand to be a bit longer.

When you hear 25 songs, one after the other, about men, women, children, and pets, who've met untimely ends, you suddenly realise how many exist, and widly popular songs at that. You also realise how many different kinds of stories they tell, and how sentimentally awful the lyrics can be.

Think of Delilah, Ruby, Tell Laura I Love Her and Honey, and you'd think the hamming-up would be irresistible.

But this production goes a whole other way, treading a fine line to avoid tackiness and too much tastefulness. The cast - Emma Kinane, Katherine Mitchell, Darren Young, Jeff Kingsford-Brown and creator Michael Nicholas Williams - play well off each other, harmonise angelically, and have voices made for the solos they sing. Ian Harman's seamless choreography and Kate Louise Elliott's direction also do wonders to take the mickey where it should be taken, while giving due credit to numbers such as a Bohemian Rhapsody as satisfying as you'll find anywhere, a perfect, moody Ode to Billy Joe and a fun twist on Leader of the Pack.

John Hodgkins' clever set design echoes the days of spinning vinyl, and it's good to see Michael Nicholas Williams step out from behind the keyboard to do some tuneful solo-ing of his own.

Give this show a whirl. Friday's preview audience - who couldn't resist singing along, clapping and hooting - seemed dead chuffed.

Feilding Herald Review

Reviewed by Joan Ford for the Feilding Herald, Tuesday July 20, 2010

Michael Nicholas Williams whilst rehearsing for a show at Centrepoint back in 1998 took along old songbooks to use for vocal warm-ups.  One night he chose Bobby Goldsboro’s Honey. It was a sad song back in its day. It was obvious that the songwriter missed her when she died. And that folks was the beginning of an idea for Dead Tragic the rest is history.  Most of the original cast are back and brilliant as ever.  Michael Nicholas Williams took to the keyboards, the microphone and one or two smooth moves.  Emma Kinane has oh so terrific comedic timing and Katherine Mitchell has,  oh, what a voice’.  Convincing and heartbroken husband Darren Young seeks revenge “and I did what I did for Maria”.   Jeff Kingsford-Brown as noted on the programme “is currently sulking over his exclusion from the original cast recording of Dead Tragic”.  So he took matters into his own hands and dealt to Delilah. He never realised that Ruby was just off to line-dancing.  Ah so sad!

The laughter and clapping continued through the show. I scanned around the audience at half time and felt comfortably secure that they knew the lyrics and were having just as much fun. Those tragic songs about death, be it self inflicted, the justice system, revenge, hurricanes, war. Special mention must go to the rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. You wonder about the nations psyche, but only briefly because the next song starts!  Katherine Mitchell offered up a convincing reason as to why Honey had such a sudden departure, whilst Darren Young soulfully sang how he missed her.

Five very talented people took the stage and delighted in giving the songs the justice they deserved and obviously enjoyed doing it.  Plus they danced, put on a hurricane, raced cars and sent Shannon away.

Musical mayhem

Reviewed by David Collins for The Tribune, Wednesday July 14, 2010

Dreading musicals as I always do, I assumed Dead Tragic would be a series of musical numbers performed by the bloody spectres of musicians taken before their time, or a band of zombies singing in between their cerebral sustiments. I absolutely did not expect to be so well-entertained with these songs of loss of life, loss of dog, and on one occasion (Dolly Parton's Me & Little Andy) - both.

Revived (hur hur) after nearly 20 years, Dead Tragic brings together all but one of the original cast (Centrepoint vet Jeff Kingsford-Brown stepped into the breach as the new member of the ensemble) in a fantastic lot of musical numbers, where the songs are treated honourably yet the stories contained are played with as to render some utterly hilarious.

Played out on a giant turntable complete with working arm, the cast work their way through a raft of selections: the Latin machinations of Barry Manilow's Copacabana; the old west with Johnny Preson's Running Bear; the perils of war with Paperlace's Billy, Don't Be A Hero, and its aftermath with Kenny Roger's Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town; and the dangers of anything with a motor in it - whether cycle or racing car - with Creations Tell Laura I Love Her, or The Shangri-Las' Leader Of The Pack.

The storytelling was great here - Emma Kinane, Katherine Mitchell, Darren Young, Jeff Kingsford-Brown, and Michael Nicholas Williams all doing a magnificent job. Mitchell particularly stood out, less for the gusto she gave her Freddie Mercury impersonation in Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and more for the way she had me struggling to breathe from laughing - whether it was her multiple shoes during that Dolly Parton number or her haphazard staggering with Karen Young's Nobody's Child (a lovely touch was the karaoke complete with bobbing light to lead the audience).

I can forgive a lot of things: Forgive the good music; forgive the fact this is a brilliant show and a must-see; forgive the fact that the memory of Darren riding that scooter still cracks me up. But as a David Bowie fan, the exclusion of Ziggy Stardust is very difficult to forgive. Go see the show.

Revealing the morbity of Americans' fantasy-lives

Reviewed by John Ross for Theatreview, Monday July 12, 2010

Knifings, shootings, hangings, drownings (suicidal or accidental), being run over by a train, fatal stock car or motor bike crashes, other miscellaneous or less specified modes of untimely dying - they all seem to have had a macabre yet undeniable fascination in the realm of popular song writing and reception. Add to the mix dollops of cheesie sentimentality ...

Back in 1988, Michael Williams, who figures in this new production on keyboards, together with his colleagues at Centrepoint at the time, picked the general theme up, and compiled this musical revue of snuff songs. It’s all weirdly entertaining.

The songs are nearly all American, which makes one wonder about the morbidity of Americans’ fantasy-lives, such that the daft gun-nutters of the National Rifle Association have just succeeded in winning a Supreme Court verdict to strike down any sensible local gun-control laws, that might constrain their ability to shoot dead each other, which they do all-too-often already.

The lyrics of some of the songs, such as Darling Jane, would be well worthy of the esteemed Scottish bard William McGonagall.

An earlier production of the show in this theatre took place back in 1992, and several of the original cast are fronting up again, including Michael Williams himself on keyboards. Some songs are added, or changed.

Insofar as I can remember it well enough to make comparisons, its main tendency was to deliver appalling stories with some kind of manic, black-comic zest. This production is technically much more lavish, and sometimes the singing and immediate role-playing are relatively straight, albeit full-on, with the ironic counterpointing provided by the stage-business surrounding them.

For example, with Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town, the singing of Jeff Kingsford-Brown as a crippled war-veteran in his wheelchair is grim and bitter enough; yet alongside him, Katherine Mitchell as Ruby is dancing away in a fashion that proclaims her flighty delight in scoring some time out from attending upon her grumpy husband. And whatever he may be presuming, from the look of things she’s heading off to nothing more promiscuous than an evening of line-dancing.

In Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots, the ‘hot rod cycle’ gets ridden on to the stage cunningly disguised as a scooter.

Generally, the cooperation between the director, Kate Louise Elliott, and the choreographer, Ian Harman, generates a rich mix of stage business, lively and witty. Mitchell, Kingsford-Brown, Emma Kinane, and Darren Young all sing and act very well, in their many different roles, and wigs. Katherine Mitchell stands out, for the sheer quality of her voice and of her role-playings, but they are all fine.

The one number that didn’t work well on the first night was Shannon, about a run-over family dog, as the singer, Michael Williams himself, adopted a high-pitched voice that rendered the words incomprehensible, when using his natural voice would have been fine.

Otherwise (and this one glitch is easily fixed), the show works extremely well, and offers a great night out.

Death comes a-callin' in dead tragic songs of yester-die

Reviewed by Richard Mays for The Guardian, Thursday, July 15, 2010

What a gloriously gratuitous and giddy way to laugh away the dead-of-winter blahs. For audience members of "a certain age", experiencing Dead Tragic is akin to seeing the soundtrack of their early lives flash before their eyes.

On a suitably sombre sable set with its swinging turntable arm and coffin-shaped pickup head, the five cast members (four of them originals from the 1992 Centrepoint production) in this funereal frolic, deliver 25 classic "casket fillers". Among the selection is some of the most melodramatic, maudlin, heart-tuggin', tear jerkin', not to mention downright cheesy sop ever committed to vinyl.

It's a pretty standard theatrical format, using popular songs to underscore a musical, but Dead Tragic has no story - it's a themed revue where death comes a-calling in any manner of ways. From hangman's noose to stockcar crash; from gunshot, suicide, drowning and illness, to demise by hurricane - the ingenuity of '50s, '60s and '70s pop songwriters to make music from mortality knows few bounds.

Personally, I missed Johnny Cash's Don't Take Your Guns To Town; Lorne Greene's Ringo; Georgie Fame's  The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde; Jim Stafford's Swamp Witch; The Scaffold's Lily The Pink, and Keith West's Excerpt From A Teenage Opera.

At 11 minutes, Led Zep's In My Time Of Dying was always going to be a non-starter, not to mention the difficulties of nailing the performing rights. But see, when you get started, there are so many of these doom-laden ditties - and that's part of the show's "fatal attraction" - sitting back with a grin afterwards and disinterring other tunes of the same ilk.

Anchored by Dead Tragic's writer and musical director Michael Nicholas Williams, the performers take turns to dramatise the songs, often undercutting, or sending them up in the process. There's little in the way of exposition as most of them come with their own context.

Jeff Kingsford-Brown's take on Tom Jones' Delilah has us hooked from the opening, and he remained a strong presence to the end of the 90-odd minute show. Williams, a one-man keyboard orchestra, unleashed an astonishing falsetto during Henry Gross' Shannon, while his spouse, Emma Kinane was a model of consistency whether singing lead or back-up.

Even though, vocally, things were still settling in on opening night, Dead Tragic is quite the merry memorial to these swan-songs of yester-die. Great fun!

Laugh till you cry - macabre mayhem

Reviewed by Mary Bryan for the Wanganui Chronicle, Wednesday 21 July, 2010

This musical may sound macabre, but is hilariously funny and superbly done.

It is a show to uplift one on a cold wintry night or Sunday afternoon.

The entire cast – Williams, Emma Kinane, Katherine Mitchell, Darren Young, and Jeff Kingsford-Brown are polished actors and singers...

They harmonise well and each of their solos suits their voice.

And the cast’s hamming up of the 25 songs is truly brilliant and never distasteful; not even the over the top send up of Darling Jane.

A song about two honeymooners off the Miami Coast whose boat is destroyed I n a hurricane it could have been written by the still popular 1800s  Scottish poet William  McGonagall, (arguably the world’s worst poet)  but wasn’t. 

The 25 songs include Bohemian Rhapsody,  Running Bear,  Teen Angel,  In  The Ghetto,  Tell Laura I Love  Her,  Delia,  Ode to Billy Joe,  Green Green Grass of Home,  Billy Don’t Be a Hero , Leader of the Pack,  I Did What I Did for Maria  and Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town.