One of Saturday Night TV’s most watched shows over recent months has been Let it Shine, a pumped up talent contest with which pop star Gary Barlow (of group Take That) selected a new boy band to feature in his new musical The Band.
But when will London audiences get to meet the guys?
Well, not for a while. The musical will tour the UK extensively over the next year and a half whilst no doubt the writers fine tune the show before it faces the London critics for an anticipated West End run.
The Band has the same writing team as The Girls, the current West End hit adaptation of movie, Calendar Girls with songs by Barlow Barlow and a script by Tim Firth, produced by Dafydd Rogers and David Pugh.
We’re told that “The show will feature the music of Take That, but will not be about the lives of the band members. Instead it will follow five 16-year-old girls who are fans of the band. The parts have been cast, but names are yet to be announced. Let It Shine’s winning act, Five to Five, will not have any spoken lines in the production”
But who are the band members?
If you watched the show you’ll have followed the path to victory of AJ Bentley, who as reported in the Sun ,“made it into Five to Five after wowing the judges in his first audition and gaining 18 stars out of a possible 20” a better result than two years ago when his former band were dismissed by judge Simon Cowell on his talent show, The X Factor.
The Sun newspaper’s handy guide to the fledgling pop stars also reports that “Curtis T Johns doesn't just have a great voice, he is also a songwriter and has penned a number of tracks on Matt Cardle's latest album as well as writing songs for Kerri Watt and Ray Quinn”
Meanwhile Nick Carsberg, the tabloid tells us, “impressed the judges on his first performance - especially Dannii - as he focused all his attention on flirting with her”.
Apparently third band member, Sario Solomon’s TV appearances were hampered by laryngitis which he feared would affect his performance but he ultimately sailed through to triumph. He can also speak fluent Japanese!
Finally Yazdan Qafouri, is a school student from Yorkshire who “has always loved the stage, performing in concerts at school and taking the lead in a number of musical productions while he studied” He is originally from Tehran, Iran.
If you can’t wait two years to see them all in action in London, here are their tour dates.
2017
Manchester Opera House (8 - 30 September)
Sheffield Lyceum Theatre (3 - 14 October)
Bradford Alhambra Theatre (17 - 28 October)
Mayflower Theatre Southampton (31 October - 11 November)
Llandudno Venue Cymru (14 - 25 November)
Regent Theatre Stoke-on-Trent (28 November - 9 December)
2018
Wales Milennium Centre Cardiff (9 - 20 January)
Liverpool Empire Theatre (23 January - 3 February)
Norwich Theatre Royal (6 - 17 February)
Marlowe Theatre Canterbury (20 February - 3 March)
Hull New Theatre (6 - 17 March)
Leeds Grand Theatre (20 - 31 March)
Newcastle Theatre Royal (3 - 14 April)
Bristol Hippodrome (17 - 28 April)
Birmingham Hippodrome (1 - 12 May)
Plymouth Theatre Royal (15 - 26 May)
Northampton Royal & Derngate (29 May - 9 June)
Nottingham Theatre Royal (12 - 23 June)
Glasgow King's Theatre (26 June - 7 July)
Edinburgh Playhouse (10 - 14 July)
It's no surprise that the Almeida Theatre is to transfer their smash hit production of Hamlet to the West End, starring Andrew Scott and Juliet Stephenson and directed by Robert Ike.