I love a concert musical at Cadogan Hall.
The Clockmaker’s Daughter is a very sweet, but really quite sad, musical. The story is about love, loss and acceptance, and it draws you in and makes you feel like you are part of Spindlewood.
The entire cast was fantastic - Christine Allado was particularly perfect as Constance, changing from sweet and naive to strong and independent, and she has an amazing voice. And, speaking of amazing voices, John Owen-Jones was brilliant as Abraham; his solo of ‘You’re Still Here’ literally had the entire audience holding their breathe.
The music, although really quite dramatic and powerful, wasn’t that memorable, and I don’t know if some elements had been cut for the concert version, but it felt like there wasn’t enough exposition and exploration to underpin the character development: it just seemed to suddenly happen.
Also, the sound balance was a little off, and it was a little hard to understand the lyrics of the ensemble numbers.
I feel that this musical is too ‘small’ for a massive West End stage, and for a long run - it’s more like a studio production - but I think that it could do really well as an off-West End show.