The Osmonds: A New Musical review – an awful lot of Osmond for your buck

Churchill theatre, Bromley
The musical based on a book by Jay Osmond hints at unsettling moments in the brothers’ televised childhood before reality is swept under the carpet

Thanks to their clean-cut image and crystal clear harmonies, the Osmonds sold over 100m records worldwide. Their smash hits make the right kind of crowd melt, swoon and sway. All the classics, including Puppy Love and Love Me For a Reason, are in this new musical. And then some. You get an awful lot of Osmond for your buck. Heavenly for some. A little bit much for the rest of us.

The book has been written by middle child Jay Osmond in conjunction with director Shaun Kerrison. It’s fairly zippy but barely digs beneath the squeaky clean surface. There are tantalising glimpses of a much more interesting story – especially in the flashbacks with military dad George Osmond (Charlie Allen), who made his kids get up at 4.30am to practise. It can’t have been much of a childhood.

One particular phrase sticks in the mind: ‘It doesn’t matter who’s in front, as long as it’s an Osmond.’ That’s one hell of a line to live by. It’s only near the end of the show that we get a feel for the tension this kind of mantra might have caused. The musical suggests that thanks to some bad business decisions, the whole family loses everything. Finally the ugly emotions are released. Anger. Resentment. Jealousy. Just as quickly, though, it’s all very tidily shoved back under the carpet.

Besides their stratospheric success, which peaked in the 70s, the Osmonds were also one of the first families to grow up on TV – an idea cleverly encapsulated by Lucy Osborne’s vibrant set, which frames the stage in a series of diminishing TV screens. There’s a particularly strange scene when we watch a five-year-old Donny Osmond sing live on TV. Young Osian Salter belts out the song with impressive abandon and it is parcelled up as wholesome but feels unsettling.

Still, the group numbers are hip-swayingly good fun, Ryan Anderson finds piercing heartache in Merril’s solo numbers and Georgia Lennon’s Marie deserves a country music spin-off show all to herself. Each of the Osmonds might have made for a fascinating story. But all lumped together? Too thin. Too samey. Too nice.

• Touring the UK until 3 December.