Spend Spend Spend, The Gallery Players, New Wolsey Theatre, until Saturday 21st 2008. 

What would you do if you won £3m pounds on the lottery? The equivalent in 1961 was £152,000 and when Viv Nicholson and her husband won that amount on the football pools she entered the history books with her pledge to “Spend, spend, spend”.

The musical Spend Spend Spend, by Steve Brown and Justin Greene, traces the “rags to riches and back to rags” story of Viv’s life, with the mature Viv (Samantha Horsfield) narrating Young Viv’s (Amy Restall) story.  From her teenage years as an ice-cream seller at the cinema, through the pools win, subsequent spending spree that left her and her husband Keith, caught between their old lives in the Castleford mining community and the upper classes, with both groups resenting their good fortune.

Bankruptcy and tragedy, remarriage and violence followed and today Viv is a hairdresser in her old home town.

Tightly produced (by Pat Taplin) and fast moving, The Gallery Players produced an evening of drama and humour, confident singing and energetic dancing. All the principals were excellent, the supporting cast, playing multiple roles, well-rehearsed and obviously enjoying themselves. As for the two Viv’s, by the end of the play the audience were rooting for them and there was hardly a dry eye in the house as they sang together Canary in a Cage.

I first saw this show in the West End, and Samantha Horsfield’s beautiful, slightly husky voice, reminded me of the star of that production, Barbara Dickson. An excellent production – catch it if you can.  

Rachel Sloane 
20th June 2008