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Masters of the House Hosted by Nicholas Parsons - One4Review

In some ways the putting together of a compilation musical show is similar to taking a journey in a car.

Each has to start at the beginning and each will reach the end, but it is the quality of how one completes this journey that makes or breaks the experience. Travel in a twenty-year-old banger and the whole trip will be less enjoyable than if one travelled in a brand new Rolls.

The concept of this show is a well tried and tested one. Several singers with West End pedigrees and a small backing band being the essence and shows such as ‘Magic of the Musicals’, featuring Marti Webb and Mark O’Malley, was the first I saw almost 20 years ago and ‘Beyond the Barricade’ performed by Andy Reiss and David Fawcett together with a veritable cornucopia of West End girls have been a regular ‘must see’ over the last decade. Why? They are definitely a ‘Rolls journey’.

Masters of the House have been around for a decade also, but this was the first time they had fallen under my gaze at Dunfermline’s’ Alhambra Theatre. Again the two girl- two guy format prevailed, but with the addition of Nicholas Parsons attempting to put a storyline together as they featured their own arrangements of a whole host of West End and Broadway musical numbers including in the first half, selections from Cabaret, Godspell, Evita, Wicked and West Side Story amongst others.

Part two was again something similar starting with a Rogers and Hammerstein montage and venturing into Chicago, Blood Brothers, Rent, Hair, Les Mis of course and encoring with a Mama Mia mix.

The participants vary each performance as there appear to be a pool of talent available and I’m afraid that I could only catch their first names, those being Amanda, Hayley, Nick and David and while each had their moments, I felt the show had initially at least an under rehearsed feel about it. Certainly not the silky smooth style other mentioned companies exude. This did improve somewhat for the second act I am pleased to say.

However, the journey was completed and to most of the audiences satisfaction. Perhaps they are more comfortable travelling in lesser cars, I’m afraid it’s my preference for a limousine.

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