What I Go To School For - Musical

I love the band Busted and I think band member James Bourne, has a ridiculous amount of talent. So when I heard that James Bourne (and Elliot Davis) had written a musical about Busted, I instantly knew that I had to go despite it being in Brighton, many miles away from my home in Yorkshire! I have seen (and thoroughly enjoyed) the two other musicals the pair have written together, Loserville and Out There so I knew that the Busted musical was likely to be very good.

The Busted musical aptly named What I Go To School For after the bands debut single tells the story of Busted. Flashback over 10 years ago and Busted were the biggest band in the UK at the time, they had number one singles, platinum albums, sell out tours and a very loyal fanbase but as everyone knows the band didn't quite work out as expected. The story weaves in around many of the bands biggest hits such as Crashed The Wedding, Year 3000 and Thunderbirds. A couple of new songs composed for the musical are also thrown in for good measure but don't feel an inch out of place next to the well known tracks. 

What I Go To School For was being performed by the Youth Music Theatre group meaning that every single member of the cast were between the ages of 11-21 and unbelievably it was the first youth theatre performance that I've ever seen. Wow, is all I can say about it! The talent in the entire cast was unreal. I can honestly see most, if not all, of this cast making successful West End careers for themselves in the future, they were every inch professional and the talent on the Brighton stage was incredible. The stage changes were utterly smooth and it was all extremely professional. The entire cast had the audience eating out of their hands with the catchy dance numbers, funny moments in the script (my personal favourite being a scene involving Benedict Cumberbatch) and all course thanks to the well known sing along songs. 

I feel like it's also worth mentioning how perfectly cast the 3 main actors playing the Busted band members were. I've seen Busted perform many times and all three actors (Joesph Riley - James, Zac Robinson - Matt, Roman Lewis - Charlie) had got the performance style of their respective characters completely spot on. They all just seemed to perfectly fit the roles and it is truly astounding that they'll all under 21 and playing lead characters so incredibly. 

I have seen supposedly tear jerking musicals before but I have never broke down in tears as much as I did during What I Go To School For. The scenes which showed the breakdown of Busted, literally tore me apart in the middle of the theatre. The acting from the 3 actors playing James, Matt and Charlie was superb. The emotion portrayed in there voices whilst singing songs such as Meet You There, Everything I Knew and Over Now was better than most West End performers that I've seen.

Sadly, last night I attended the last performance of the What I Go To School For musical at Brighton's Theatre Royal but if the show gets announced for a UK tour or West End transfer then I cannot urge you to go see the show enough. Busted's songs weaved in perfectly with the story and the show story was absolutely enjoyable. I related to so much of the show as I was that fan that is in the musical who made banners and homemade shirts but I attended with someone who didn't care for Busted at all and they still walked out of the theatre raving about how good the show was. A fantastic show for the whole family!