Lost in Music: One Night at the Disco – Adelphi Theatre, London

Musical Director: Tony Wood

Lost in Music is a theatrical cuckoo, taking its revolving cast from theatre to theatre and invading their spaces for a night of disco fun. Fittingly, the London show plays at the Adelphi, currently home to Back to the Future, a good place for some nostalgic time travel.

Before a usual production, there is the expected request to turn off mobile phones. There’s no such reminder before Lost in Music. Audiences are not requested to stay seated or leave the singing to the professionals; instead, they are encouraged to sing, to dance and to film the best moments and upload them to the web. The audience becomes as much a part of the show as the performers themselves, and there is much pleasure in watching young people get down and boogie to the old tracks, while seasoned disco hounds groove to their favourite numbers.

The setlist takes in most of the anthems of seventies disco, with an extended Earth, Wind and Fire run, a Chic medley, an I Will Survive singalong and a little Barry White. Although fans of more electronic-based disco may be disappointed, and there’s no Kool and the Gang, the selection will delight anyone who knows the lyrics to We Are Family or recognises the stomp of Rose Royce’s Car Wash. Musical Director, Tony Wood has put together a tight band which features a trio of brass players, allowing Lost in Music to recreate the lusher, funkier side of disco. They also turn the bass guitar up so high that Des Woodbine’s licks physically pulse through the first few rows.

There are five singers in the ensemble and each brings a lot of personality to their performance. Bilal Aygei has a spot-on falsetto, gyrates his hips and rocks leather trousers. Jackie Walters spikes her lyrics with aggression and stalks the stage. Natalie Collins teases and flirts with the audience and Taryn Charles has the most powerful, pure and expressive singing voice. Mastering the Ceremony is Kevin Cole, full of big poses, goofball expressions and a joie-de-vivre which ties everything together – though his colleagues are very generous to allow him to upstage them as much as he does.

The staging is simple, as is necessary for a production that takes single nights in many different venues and there are a few moments where the lighting is muddled, leaving the performers in the dark. There are, however many costume changes, taking in iconic disco styles, from white suits to slinky glitter-ball dresses. These are all presented with a modern twist, without descending into pastiche or parody. There’s some choreography but there’s also a lot of goofing around and all the numbers give the performers space to inject their own moves – even the brass section gets a few chances to strut their stuff.

Lost in Music is not a respectable show, audience members bump into each other in the tight theatre space and phones flash and glare all around the auditorium. It is, however, a respectful one, celebrating disco’s ability to bring a smile to the face and move the feet

While disco’s reputation for being overly simplistic is unfair (seriously, listen to the bassist), the songs do repeat themselves a lot and some outstay their welcome. The evening feels a little too long, and although the performers have plenty of stamina left, the last few numbers are an endurance test for the audience. In spite of this, Lost in Music succeeds in getting a tired, London audience to dance for over two hours on a muggy Tuesday night – and that’s some achievement.

Reviewed on 13 June and tours the UK until December 2023