Shantify (Palais de Variété at Assembly George Square Gardens) is a rollicking sixty minutes of close harmonisation by six loveable chaps, pretending to be men of the sea, or something related to it. They played to a packed house, emulating their sold-out run last year. I suspect there were many repeat attendees in the audience.
There is a pretty weak and not very believable storyline, which I didn’t really think was necessary. These guys aren’t a choir as such, and so the dafting about is all part of the show and gives a very loose reason for singing whichever song comes next. There is a lot of joshing and mild banter, never in bad taste or offensive, and I’m sure this is a great part of the appeal for audience members who flock to see these very likeable lads who, coincidentally, have great voices too.
Like any boy band, they show off their different personalities, vocal ranges and sartorial styles, and appear to revel in the slightly hammed-up versions of themselves. They are lively on stage, with minimally taxing choreography, taking it in turns to showboat, every pun intended.
They are not the younger brothers or sons of Fisherman’s Friends. They don’t really sing sea shanties. Shantify is subtitled A New Nautical Musical and that’s definitely the vibe they’re going for. All of the self-styled ‘Barnacle Buoys’ are West End performers, so they are good, very good, at what they do. What they do is ‘shantify’ popular songs, using the tunes and words of each one to bash out a shanty-like beat, with hand-clapping and foot-stomping aplenty. Though my observation was that, in general, there wasn’t as much audience participation on that front as I suspect they were hoping to get.
There’s not a lot to dislike about Shantify, but, ironically, I found it a bit soulless and lacking in real heart and, ultimately, I was quite bored. That doesn’t make it a bad show, or one not worth catching if you can still get a ticket, but it wasn’t the exciting, uplifting show I’d been led to expect.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
