Musical to lay bare the Osmonds
OSMONDMANIA is revving up again — 50 years after the boy band were at the height of their success — with a new musical showing the flip side of fame.
It tells how their father trained them mercilessly, how they were swindled out of millions by their financial advisers, leaving them massively in debt, and how they worked for years to pay back every penny.
The show’s based on the memoirs of Jay Osmond, one of the famous band of brothers.
He told me how their father George, a former army sergeant, would drill and discipline them daily ‘until we dropped’.
BIll Deamer, who is choreographing The Osmonds: A New Musical, told me: ‘If that happened now, people would hold their hands up in horror. That was cruelty.’ He added: ‘It’s not a jukebox musical. It’s the story of their lives.’
Deamer, who will work with director Shaun Kerrison, was speaking as he met with the show’s principal cast members — Jamie Chatterton, Danny Nattrass, Ryan Anderson, Alex lodge and Joseph Peacock, who are portraying (in descending order of age) Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay and Donny.
They were rehearsing Seventies hits Down By The lazy River and love Me For A Reason
— a chart topper for The
Osmonds before most of Boyzone, who also had a hit with it, were even born.
First, they performed a cappella; then later, with music supervisor Rich Morris accompanying on piano. I didn’t hear Puppy love, though ‘it will be there’, I was assured by Joseph Peacock, who’ll be stepping into Donny’s satin bellbottoms when the show opens at the Curve in leicester on February 3, before embarking on a UK tour.
Producers Hamish Greer and Tom De Keyser hope to transfer it into the West End if it takes off on the road.
The ‘brothers’ were chosen after several rounds of auditions, over several weeks, in ventilated studios. All of the actors told me that their mothers had been fans of the Osmonds.
ANDERSON said that when his mother was in her teens, she would go into the bathroom, splash her face with water and ‘pretend to cry to the songs’.
Aren’t the Osmonds a bit cheesy now, I wondered. ‘Everyone likes cheese!’ said Morris.
Peacock added that maybe, after all these years, the Osmonds are due a reappraisal and that the word ‘respect’ might be overdue.