Review: Topless The Musical at Epstein Theatre

“…Lovelady’s voice, accent work and easy rapport with the audience are all worth the price of admission…”

Topless The Musical by Miles Tredinnick, Epstein Theatre

By Melissa Molloy

I went along to Liverpool’s Epstein Theatre to watch Topless The Musical, a one-woman show centred around Sandie (Holly Lovelady) , a London sightseeing tour guide who takes us through her life alongside the sights of the capital city. It’s a show with a lot going on and there is plenty here worth talking about.

We see Sandie’s tour bus doubling as a vehicle, quite literally, for her to retell the story of her life with Duncan, the love of her life who turned out to be a cheat. She was unable to move on from the trauma he caused her and her lamenting is woven in and out of her job, he is already entwined with it, as that is how they met. Sandie regularly interrupts her story about Duncan to shout out London landmarks and reel off facts about them as if the audience were genuinely passengers on her bus.

Holly Lovelady has a genuinely lovely singing voice, and there were a couple of moments where she sang completely unaccompanied that really stood out. It takes some nerve to fill a room like the Epstein with nothing but your own voice, and she managed it without any trouble at all.

The props were a nice touch too. Sandie made good use of a handful of items throughout, including a model of the Tower of London, Churchill’s cigar and a police hat, passing them out into the audience at the beginning so they could throw them back to her at appropriate times. People clearly enjoyed getting their hands on them, and it added a bit of playful interaction to what could otherwise have been a fairly static one-woman set.

Lovelady also switched between a number of distinct accents to bring the different characters in Sandie’s story to life. This was a really effective way to keep track of who was who without ever needing a costume change or a second performer. It’s not an easy thing to do convincingly on your own for the length of a full production, and she pulled it off.

The lighting deserves a mention as well. It was used cleverly throughout to signal changes in location, and the red room in particular worked well, giving a completely different atmosphere with an alluring red glow to everything around it.

The show tried hard to pull together the two halves of the story – the heartbreak of Duncan and the comic tour guide material – into something that felt fully cohesive. Topless, The Musical is clearly the product of a lot of care, and Lovelady’s voice, accent work and easy rapport with the audience are all worth the price of admission on their own. If you enjoy a good local Scouse play and you’re after a night of London wit, a few good songs and some audience participation, there’s enough here to make it worth your while.

Topless The Musical plays at Epstein Theatre on 31 July.

Melissa Molloy is currently masquerading as a special needs teacher, having previously spent 10 years teaching English, media studies and drama. In her spare time, she offers editorial reviews, beta-reads and guidance to new authors who wish to self-publish their writing. In lieu of sleeping, Melissa often finds herself with her head buried in her laptop – slowly writing her first novel. When she isn’t drowning in work, Melissa can be found paddleboarding and kayaking in local lakes, usually accompanied by at least one or two of her four children.