Review: Everybody's Talking About Jamie - not just fabulous but so important too

With its wealth of spot-on messaging and its fabulous score, Everybody's Talking About Jamie is the ultimate modern musical, and it certainly packs a punch, the tale of the boy who so famously wanted to wear a dress to his school prom.

Of course, it’s about so much more than that – the right to be yourself, how that right must come from within and how you need to fight for it. Plus it’s also about belonging, about trusting the love and the friendship all around you. Oh, and taking down the bullies.

The result is a dazzling night, huge on energy and colour, but rooted in the supreme stage talents of a wonderful cast – with Finton Flynn (cover Jamie and more usually Young Loco) leading them all brilliantly tonight. Flynn captures Jamie’s charisma, but also captures the fact that he’s so often just a little bit irritating; the fact that he’s finding his way and quickly loses it once he has found it. And that’s where the other characters come in, particularly in a golden ten minutes in the second half – his mum Margaret’s gorgeous song He's My Boy swiftly followed by the moment Hugo/Loco Chanelle delivers the piece’s emotional heart, rescuing Jamie from his lowest ebb with a special speech of remarkable compassion and generosity. Rebecca McKinnis has a superb warmth and loving (if exasperated) resilience as Margaret; John Partridge is just perfect as Jamie’s drag world mentor. Excellent too from Jamie veteran Talia Palamathanan as Pritti.

It’s the kind of show where, if you’re unlucky, you will find yourself surrounded in the audience by youngsters chatting throughout the whole thing, puncturing the illusion at pretty much every turn. But maybe you just have to ride it. It’s a great show – and an important one too.