West End heavyweights such as The Lion King, Wicked and Phantom of the Opera are all well-known and well-loved – but what about a show that brings them all together?
Enter Beyond the Barricade, a musical theatre concert that encompasses award-winning theatre scores from countless West End and Broadway shows.
Over the course of two hours, audiences are transported through some of the greatest songs in musical theatre, all performed live by West End performers used to life on stage.
Andy Reiss, David Fawcett, Katie Leeming and Poppy Tierney sing through the classics in a slick no-nonsense style, delivering the material as if crowds were watching the original performance.
And it has proven to be a successful formula, as Beyond the Barricade is now in its 19th year of touring.
It first began in 1996 when Andy Reiss and David Fawcett were asked to arrange and perform a series of musical theatre concerts for charity.
The pair had met while performing in Les Miserables and their first concert took place in a small marquee in the grounds of a country house in Sussex.
Over the next few years the show began to take on a life of its own and a trial UK tour was set for 1999.
The tour’s runaway success has led to performances in iconic venues including the Royal Albert Hall as well as shows in all corners of the globe, but performer and director Reiss never dreamed it would become such a hit.
“I saw the potential of creating a concert version of some of the most popular songs from the musical theatre genre,” he said.
“In particular I wanted to make sure the songs were true to the original versions so that the audience could invest in sitting and listening to a concert version but be completely immersed in the storytelling of each particular song.
“We take our audience on a journey through some of the greatest stage musicals, including Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, Blood Brothers, The Lion King, Hamilton and, of course, Les Miserables.”
A well-known name on the theatre circuit, Andy has spent most of his working life on stage, though he came to profession in a rather unusual way.
Unlike the majority of performers who spend years at stage school before hitting the big time, a combination of hard work and good luck saw Andy catapulted into the limelight.
“I was always surrounded by music from an early age with my parents and grandparents being involved in a brass band and by the age of five I had learned how to read and play music,” he said.
“I played in a few bands during my later teenage years, but I always loved performing in the local musical theatre societies, too.
“Then I went to university and studied economics with childcare law and worked within that field for a number of years.
“In my spare time I still enjoyed performing but nothing serious until I attended an open audition for the first production of Les Miserables outside the West End.
“I wanted to give it a go and was very surprised when they offered me a contract.
“Even then I thought it would just be 12 months’ work and I would go back to my day job.
“I never dreamed I would end up touring with the show in Manchester, Dublin and Edinburgh, and then transferring to the West End.”
As lifetime lover of musicals and with several years of Les Miserables under his belt, there isn’t much Andy doesn’t know about Theatreland.
With Beyond the Barricade, he was able to pick and choose his favourite musical scores to cover – a task he very much enjoyed.
“We get terrific feedback after the shows,” he said.
“We’ve had a lot of people saying that we have introduced them to new shows, which is always great.
“We’ve just introduced Hamilton into our concert, so our audiences can also have a sprinkling of more modern musicals, too.
“The good thing is Beyond the Barricade can travel further afield to where the big touring shows don’t reach and people tell us that we have persuaded them to go and see more theatre, which I love.
“It is the same with Les Miserables. “Amazingly, even though it has been going for over 30 years, we still get people writing saying that we have introduced them to the music of this phenomenal show.
“I think the success behind classic musicals like Les Miserables, Blood Brothers, West Side Story – the list is endless – is that they are, in themselves, great stories. They have great characters that the audience can relate to easily.
“The musical scores were written to complement the wonderful stories, so the two together just make a great recipe for success.”
Beyond the Barricade is playing at the Tivoli Theatre in Aberdeen on Saturday October 20. See www.aberdeenperformingarts.com for more details.
