New musical tells how The Osmonds soared… and then burned

The Osmonds, it seems, had a pretty appalling father, an ex-military man who was far more concerned with “training” his children than with being their dad.

And maybe he wasn’t wholly wrong. After all, it was their father who created The Osmonds. But they paid a heavy price for their success – which is where this new musical is at its most compelling.

The story is told by Jay Osmond (and presumably would have been rather different had it been written by the others) – but the great thing is that it is told utterly without self-pity.

They had a great time; they rose to the very top and sold millions and millions of records. But time as much as anything passed them by, they fell out of fashion and they crashed to the point of near bankruptcy.

And this is where this new musical is at its most striking.

To most of us The Osmonds were a slab of perfectly likeable blandness which made it through the 70s before vanishing pretty much without trace. But Jay’s new show – maybe not surprisingly – tells us that there were plenty of tensions all along the way as The Osmonds carved their path in their varying styles and in their varying permutations.

The cast are uniformly strong, but inevitably, Alex Lodge as Jay is the stand-out, the guy who walked away – and who then shows us why it mattered so much when The Osmonds finally played together again after a little matter of 27 years.

One problem perhaps is with the unchanging set. More dynamic staging would have done the show a few favours – especially given The Osmonds’ style of delivery is largely on-the-spot dancing, and always against pretty much the same backdrop.

The other thing the show leaves you thinking is just how strange it is that a band that were so immeasurably successful for so many, many years should have left behind them so relatively few instantly recognisable massive hits. Rightly these are saved for the concert-style finale… but this then means that, with a few notable exceptions, there is remarkably little that is familiar for the rest of it.

But it’s a cracking story – and it’s very well told. It’s thoughtful, it feels honest, it’s engaging and it’s provocative. And goodness, there is a lovely set of performances from the youngsters playing the young Osmonds, tonight Osian Slater – Donny; Jack Jones – Alan; Alfie Jones – Wayne; Harrison Skinner – Merrill; Tom Walsh – Jay; and Fraser Fowkes – Jimmy.