It’s the age-old story. A sixteen-year-old boy is at school, and prom is coming up and he has nothing to wear. So, he goes on an adventure of discovery to walk in those high heels, don that wig, and wear a dress so fabulous that it may even win over the school bully.
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is the hit musical that follows Jamie, a boy who dreams of becoming a drag queen, and we saw it on tour at the New Theatre in Oxford. The songs are catchy and the dances are fun, and it’s filled equally with serious themes and emotional character development as it is with daft humour and over the top characters.
The show starts with Jamie and his classmates having taken a career test, only for Jamie’s to say that he should be driving a truck. This doesn’t work for Jamie who has his ambitions set on being a drag queen. With support of his mum, his best friend he gets the idea that he’ll wear a dress to prom.
This leads him to a drag speciality shop where he meets Hugo, a retired/washed up drag queen Loco Chantelle, who takes Jamie under his wings to discover his inner drag queen.
The show is fun, although I did feel that the show skipped over showing its two most important scenes. Much of the first half builds up to Jamie performing at Loco’s drag club, and the first act literally ends without showing the performance. I figured at the time they were saving it for act two, and that the opening moment of the act was all that was shown (as a projection of Jamie) just so there could be a more elaborate costume change during the interval.
But no, the second act began with the song Everybody’s Talking About Jamie which you’re bound to get stuck in your head for at least a week. This was the set the next day and so didn’t show you the act he did. I figured that the show were saving the big performance for the second half, but instead the second act built up to Jamie attending prom, only for it to show you him walk inside and that be the end of the show. Oh well, it is what it is, but still felt like both acts built up to something it then didn’t give you the payoff for. I guess it was about the journey and not the destination.
Jamie has to overcome adversity along the way, and this includes finding his own inner confidence, and dealing with the attitudes of the class bully Dean, the school teacher who tries to ban him from attending prom and his unsupportive father. The show ends on a happy note, but the resolution to both the bully and the teacher felt brushed over and too easy. Their acceptance of Jamie happened in a split second and Jamie instantly let things be water under the bridge which I understand for the purposes of moving the show along, but felt like a free pass to people who had been pretty rotten.
The story with Jamie’s dad felt much more unresolved, expect that he still rejected Jamie and that Jamie went on to be happy in spite of his dad’s disapproval. Of the three who Jamie had to win over, I felt this was the most important but was the only one left as a loose end. I understand that the message here may be that not all family’s would be supportive of someone like Jamie, but if this was the route I still felt there could have been something more to state that Jamie was going to be fine even without the support.
The supporting cast of characters were good with Jamie’s mum’s friend Ray being a stand out fun character. Outside Jamie, his mum Margaret, Ray and Loco, the most rounded character was Pritti, who is Jamie’s best friend and gets something of her own story along the way. Most of Jamie’s classmates are mostly underdeveloped as characters, but then again for a show titled Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, I guess we should only expect Jamie to be the centre of attention!
You can get loads more Theatre articles in the Theatre section of the site, and don’t forget to check out all our stage shows on the Extreme Improv XStreamed YouTube Channel and Geek content on the Geek Battle YouTube Channel.
