Deafening stomping, applause and standing ovation for the music of Simon and Garfunkel
The Simon and Garfunkel Story
at the Corn Exchange
on Saturday, July 20
Review by DEREK ANSELL
After extensive and successful tours through the US and Australia, this show played in London at the Vaudeville theatre and later at the Lyric. A tribute to the most successful duo of all time, the show opened to a packed Newbury audience on Saturday evening. It was interesting to learn little snippets of information like the fact that Simon and Garfunkel had been in a production of Alice In Wonderland at school, Simon as White Rabbit and Garfunkel as the Cheshire Cat. Cats seem to have played a big part in their early life as they first went out on tour as a young duo named Tom and Jerry. It wasn’t specified which of them played the mouse.
The show covers the entire existence of the pair as performers, from early days at school to their last concerts together in New York. James William Pattison played Simon and managed to portray something of his voice and phrasing accurately. He could also handle those strummed rhythm guitar parts effectively.
Alex Bradshaw did well as the other half of the duo, the slightly quieter, more laidback Art Garfunkel.
As the two principals sing and strum, there is a continuous back projection screen behind them, showing events as they happened, including all the 1960s flower power, love-ins and the more unsavoury events charting the Vietnam War.
The most evocative songs of the two singers, items like The Sound Of Silence, Homeward Bound and Scarborough Fair received wild applause, as did Mrs Robinson and Old Friends.
The programme was well paced for variety with some of the wild, folk-rock material receiving the full treatment from the two singers, plus the trio of Harrison White on guitar and keyboards, Nick Martin on electric bass and Harry Denton, who played explosive drums. These three put the rock into folk-rock with highly charged support.
It was though, the slow ballads, performed with just the two voices in harmony and the lightly strummed acoustic guitar that gained the most enthusiastic applause.
Sadly, Simon and Garfunkel fell out many times over the years and today, in their early 80s, they are not even speaking. Still, it was great fun and good music while it lasted.
At the end the two principals announced that they were going to play a song by the group that first inspired them, the Everley Bothers. As they charged into Bye Bye Love I was surprised that they hadn’t tackled their biggest hit of them all, Bridge Over Troubled Water. But it hadn’t been forgotten and was sung on their encore. Of course it was.
The deafening stomping, applause and standing ovation at the end proved how well this group presented the music of Simon and Garfunkel.
