Fame the Musical review – stardom seekers light up the stage like a flame

As a real-life cohort of performers head to Edinburgh hoping to achieve recognition at the fringe, at the opposite end of the UK a revival of David De Silva’s film turned musical breathes fresh life into its own story of fame-hungry students.

With a book by Jose Fernandez, music by Steve Margoshes and lyrics by Jacques Levy, this is a production pumped with guts and gusto. It erupts like a shaken can of soda and comfortably fills the vast stage at Theatre Royal Plymouth, where Fame received its UK (and European) stage premiere in 1995. It’s directed and choreographed by Tom Jackson Greaves, soon to choreograph the West End’s much-anticipated revival of Rent, and fuelled by an exuberant cast, most of whom fulfilled their own dreams of performing on the professional stage several credits ago and are now flourishing.

Driving force … Shanay Holmes in Fame the Musical. Photograph: Johan Persson

Shanay Holmes, though a shade young to play Miss Sherman, is the driving force whose narration carries the class – and us – through a four-year cycle at a prestigious performing arts school in New York City, while her vocals are the show’s dynamite.

Storylines have been tweaked and songs cut, but the production captures the round-the-clock toil and sheer determination of these aspirants. Early number Hard Work sets the scene with movement filling every corner as the gaggle stretch, practise their scales and pirouette across the stage.

Richard Howell’s lighting visualises the sense that the students’ whole world is a stage by casting a giant spotlight on the fortress of Soutra Gilmour’s school set, while life beyond remains in shadow, unknown and unappealing. Nods to the 1980s come in the shape of leg warmers and the sound of squealing tape recorders being rewound.

It doesn’t shy away from the story’s grittier moments, including the fate of the initially spunky Carmen (Talia Palamathanan), but as in a Greek tragedy, they take place offstage and are reported back.

It’s when the students pool their talents – for the boisterous canteen scene and flashmob to the title track (written by Dean Pitchford and Michael Gore), with its flying jumps and mid-air splits – that it beams brightest. That’s when Miss Sherman’s message to her students, that success is not a solo endeavour but something to achieve together, rings truest.