REVIEW: Thriller Live, Bournemouth Pavilion Theatre

Direct from London’s West End, this is a pacy spectacular show now in its record-breaking eighth year, created to celebrate the career of Michael Jackson.

This wonderful show has toured in over 30 countries, entertaining more than 3 million people, and after touring the UK since October, it’s now in Bournemouth.

It arrives with genuine West End production values – the sound is phenomenal, the dancing sensational, the lighting awesome, and the Pavilion stage has never seemed so big, impressive, and utterly dazzling.

The six-piece live band is magnificent, the five lead vocalists brilliant, particularly Rory Taylor excelling on the moving She’s Out Of My Life and the compelling Beat It.

Choreography is creative, dynamic and powerful, the ten dancers skin-tight in their explosive precision.

Michael Jackson’s material was often pure, polished pop music – Blame It On The Boogie, Man In The Mirror, and the show-stopping Can You Feel It.

Yet sometimes the songs are profound and thought-provoking: Earth Song and They Don’t Care About Us, although to compare Jackson’s humanitarian leanings with overhead projections of Martin Luther King, President Kennedy, and Mother Theresa seems a tad hyperbolic.

A standing ovation followed Billie Jean, Bad, and the hooky Thriller.

If you’re a Michael Jackson fan, see this show. If you’re not, catch it anyway; you’ll be impressed.

Thriller Live runs until Saturday.

The current UK tour concludes at Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre from July 18 to 23.

Brendan McCusker