Quality Hill "Sh-Boom Sh-Boom" review by andiam

Quality is part of their name Rating: 5


Sh-Boom Sh-Boom: The Doo-Wop Sounds of the 1950s
Quality Hill Playhouse

I guess I'm guilty of redundancy when I say that Kent has produced another great show. My one difficulty with this show was that I had to fight the temptation to sing along. No one sings these songs better than Melinda MacDonald. Her rendition of "Sleeping Bee" was the highlight of the evening for me. Colleen Grate was terrific with "Shanghai" and I would have loved to hear more of the falsetto Tim Noland sang in "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." The Fifties are often remembered as the era in which rock and roll began, but there were a lot of other great songs, many of which were on display in this show. It's a shame that so much of Kent's audience comes from the AARP generation. Young people should have a chance to hear these songs as well.

It should be noted that the show does not cover the full range of Fifties music, which included arguably the greatest show tunes in history, as well as the birth of the folk era (Weavers, Kingston Trio), progressive jazz, and the greatest American operas ever written. It presents rather a thematically unified program of the memorable songs reminiscent of a lost era in which popular music was written for adults.