(seen at the afternoon performance on 6th November 2025)
Those of a certain age will remember that 7pm pre-“Coronation Street” slot on ITV. It was used for bright but witless sitcoms like “Tripper’s Day,” starring Leonard Rossiter – managing a hapless cartoon of a supermarket manager and its oddly behaving staff.
If you added dance routines involving the checkout counters and trollies, and inserted songs by pop group “Steps” into those scripts, you would have “Here & Now,” set in the appropriately named “Better Best Bargains” supermarket.
Shaun Kitchener’s thin story outstays its welcome about 15 minutes into the second half, when the none-too-subtly planted “call backs” begin to sputter into life. It isn’t so much that you will figure them out in advance – more that you will resent that “aren’t I clever” tone, when the twists turn out more screw-top lid than Chubby Checker.
The Steps numbers are mostly malleted rather than hammered into the storyline. One or two actually move the plot along. The rest are an excuse for more trolley-dancing and moves camper than Soho in Pride Week.
And that is a good thing. The glitter and unselfconscious ensemble spreading it are what keep this show watchable.
Tom Rogers provides a static supermarket shelf stage surround, shelves groaning with “Tushee” toilet roll and “Sudsy Liquid” – if you are close enough to read the labels. The counters move, an office slides on and a song-title graffitied wall and seafront drop in to add a little location variety.
This allows space for all that movement, and you can’t fault the 9 person ensemble nor Matt Cole’s choreography of them. There may be only so much you can do with crayon-colour overalled folk and supermarket props, but Cole always manages to come up with something.
A thought which also applies to the lead cast. Rebecca Lock uses all her experience to bring Caz to life. Chirpy leader of the gang, with a sad history, she holds the stage whenever she sings, and wields the knitting needles keeping this woolly lot somewhat together.
Jaqui Dubois matches her in the perky stakes as resilient Vel, one of the few allowed to get angry but never losing optimism. Patricia (Finty Williams) gives her staff a lot to be angry about, with a nice line in awful French and pettiness.
River Medway and Blake Patrick Anderson give Jem and Robbie a little emotional ballast, in contrast to John Stacey, Edward Baker-Duly and Chris Grahamson, who, as heterosexual men, must be vilified at all times according to current convention.
It is a trot through a songbook. We are kept waiting until the start of act two for a massive “Tragedy,” delivered all guns blazing then fading out. By then, the feeling has gone from our necks upwards and we are waiting to be allowed to check out ourselves.
Not “Mamma Mia!” or “ABBA Voyage” – too shallow to really involve the audience enough to get up and dance to the obligatory “Megamix” ending. It’ll please “Steps” fans to hear the music, and cast and staging are neon blue. Sadly, the impact on many musical fans is more likely to be “better best forgotten.”
2 stars.
Photo credit: Pamela Wraith. Used by kind permission of the New Wimbledon Theatre.