ADAM Myers, a leading light on the thriving local musical-theatre scene, teamed up with Matt McGrath, a rising-star who also fronts local group Electric Eden.

Backed by a youthful band they treated an appreciative audience to a diverse mixture of songs.

An inspired version of Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud, intertwining the lyrics with Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy worked surprisingly well and set the stage for the rest of the cabaret-styled evening.

Myers is renowned for choosing Off-Broadway shows for his Music Theatre South productions so a song from The Addams Family prefaced an atmospheric Broadway Here I Come from the little-known Smash Justin Timberlake’s Mirrors and Michael Jackson’s Man in The Mirror were given original arrangements followed by Fight The Dragons from the film Big Fish.

McGrath made use of guitar, fiddle and loop pedals to create a virtual orchestra and his driving, self-penned, There or Thereabouts was well-received.

Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams was another feature before Sarah Bayliss and Stacey Barnett were enlisted to beautifully reprise But I Do from last year’s excellent MTS production of I Love You Because.

With lots of banter and rapport with the audience the broad spectrum of themes covered was aptly summed-up by Sinatra’s epic That’s Life. If this was a fight it was a high-scoring draw!

Alan Johns