I was being bundled into a dark room on a Friday night with a merry band of people murmuring that they didn’t know what to expect from “I Heart Michael Ball”, and neither did I. Pictures were being taken with a cardboard cutout of the man himself, by people with thumbs up, wearing Michael Ball t-shirts, which led me to wonder if they had misunderstood the poster.
The one-man show, delivered mostly in the style of a monologue (with hints of audience interaction), starts light-heartedly, with a seemingly hapless yet affable sort welcoming us to the anniversary of the bi-annual Michael Ball Appreciation Society, dishing out badges, wide eyed smiles and tongue in cheek jokes.
Chuckles soon gave way to a trickling tension, as a harmless love for an iconic singer, slowly transformed into a sinister obsessive coping mechanism for childhood trauma.
There are moments of genuine tenderness in a very convincing (and, in parts, chilling) performance by Alexander Millington as a nervous and vulnerable victim, with an infatuation borne out of brotherly love, and a shared method of processing the abuse they suffered at the hands of an alcoholic father.
Raw, intimate and intense, the show slowly ratchets up the pressure with finely tuned pacing, (the show is only an hour long) illuminating how easy it can be to form nostalgic infatuations with small things in our most vulnerable moments.
A great show, for fans of dark comedy, third party introspection and ultimately, Michael Ball.
Review by Luke Kingsland
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