Best Friends soothe a Little Bawl of Pain

West End Best Friend Productions came all the way across the country from Birmingham’s Old Joint Stock Theatre to present A Little Bawl of Pain, an evening of tearjerkers at the Corn Hall, the second instalment of a projected trio of shows showcasing the range of emotions musical theatre brings to the stage. James Edge, our host for the evening, unapologetically confessed from the outset that this was a show for diehard fans of the genre – if you’ve been dragged here by your partner, he warned, scanning the intimate audience for likely suspects, then brace yourselves for the next two hours.

Even the most casual fan of musicals, however, would have recognised songs from the opening medley of numbers from Les Misérables, for which Edge was joined on stage by Federica Basile and Sinead Kenny, accompanied on keyboards by Callum Thompson. Thereafter, each performer took it in turns to impress with the power and range of their vocals, with Kenny belting out Sondheim’s Losing My Mind from Follies swiftly followed by Basile’s soulful rendition of With You from Ghosts. Ensuring everyone got their turn, Edge then got his moment in the spotlight with a touching version of Cecily Smith from Fly By Night. Interspersed between big hitters from the likes of Matilda, Wicked and Phantom of the Opera, we also got left field entries from Toy Story and even a gender bending turn from Edge performing z lung bursting version of Rose’s Turn’ from Gypsy. 

Further highlights included She Used to Be Mine from Waitress and Rent’s I’ll Cover You (Reprise) but towards the end of the night, the set tilted towards the classics, with Sinead Kenny’ paying homage to Lionel Bart with Oliver’s As Long As He Needs Me and Federica Basile reminding us that Carousel’s You’ll Never Walk Alone had a life before the football terraces, before the whole company returned to the stage to close the show with West Side Story’s Somewhere.