A show-stopping scene from The Bodyguard at His Majesty's Theatre. Image - Paul Coltas
The Bodyguard opens with a bang – literally – as without warning an ear-splitting gunshot gets the action going and most of the audience in His Majesty’s jumping out of their seats.
But they soon settled back in as, within seconds of that shock start, as a full-blown concert number – complete with dazzling costumes, dancers and even flames - saw star of the show Sidonie Smith rattle through a mash up of Whitney Houston’s greatest numbers.
Talk about showstoppers – and that was barely seconds after the show started.
All in all, it was a breathless taster of what was to come, with Whitney’s unforgettable music at the heart of this musical theatre take on her classic 1992 film with Kevin Costner, The Bodyguard.
One of the biggest movies of the decade – and one that cemented Whitney as a global superstar – it has a surprisingly by-the-numbers plot. Global superstar receives death threats, top bodyguard brought in to protect her, they hate each other, they love each other, he saves her. The end.
Sidonie Smith as Rachel Marrona and Adam Garcia as Frank Farmer have great chemistry in The Bodyguard. Image - Paul Coltas
That said, the storyline is played through adeptly and briskly in this touring production, helped along by a nice love-hate chemistry between Sidone, going full diva as Rachel Marron, and Adam Garcia, as the uber-professional but haunted former Secret Service agent Frank Farmer.
While the plot is never lost, it does take a back seat to allow the real star of the show to shine – that music.
Sidonie rises to the challenge of matching Whitney’s vocals, but giving them even more emotional heft at key moments in the story, such I Have Nothing as a prelude to Frank and Rachel’s first kiss.
As an added bonus, The Bodyguard offers two Whitneys for the price of one. Sasha Monique truly shines as Rachel’s sister, Nikki. And when she first sings – doing the honours with Saving All My Love For You – her powerhouse voice is simply spellbinding.
One of the highlights of the show is Sasha and Sidonie duetting on Run To You. A proper spinetingling moment.
They wanna dance with everybody ... the finale of The Bodyguard. Image - Paul Coltas.
Amid all the drama of the plot and spectacle of some of the big set-piece numbers, there are some moments of humour too.
A scene in a karaoke bar where Farmer takes Rachel on a “date” sees Adam Garcia sing his one song in the whole show. Badly. His faltering, near spoken, I Will Always Love You (in character, of course) was a grin-worthy treat.
But the rest of the cast and ensemble more than made up for that with flawless voices, high-energy choreography, played out on a simple-to-spectacular set that framed the action nicely.
And it came into its own for the finale and a truly spectacular staging of I Will Always Love You with Sidonie knocking one of the greatest songs of all time out of the park.
The audience lapped it all up and when it came time for the razzle-dazzle fizz of I Wanna Dance With Somebody at the curtain call, everyone in the house was on their feet, clapping, singing and cheering.
All of which meant The Bodyguard went out with almost as big a bang as it came in.
The Bodyguard is at His Majesty’s Theatre until Saturday. You can find more information and tickets here.
Review by Scott Begbie