Summer Holiday: The Musical – Review – Sheffield Crucible Theatre

By Clare Jenkins, June 2026

Could there be a better week to open Summer Holiday? Thirty-plus degrees in Sheffield, a beach-with-deckchairs outside the Crucible, live music across the city centre, shorts and sundresses in abundance, a carnival atmosphere everywhere. Who needs to take a double-decker bus across Europe to Greece?

Well, that’s what Cliff Richard and The Shadows did in Peter Yates’s 1963 film, which cemented their clean-cut, carefree reputation. In an era when three-quarters of Brits never went abroad, making do instead with the joys of Bournemouth, Great Yarmouth or Scarborough, the film also represented a sense of adventure and sun-drenched glamour, especially if you were young. After all, at the time, Europe was just something you saw on slides fitted into the Viewfinder you could get with coupons from the back of a Weetabix packet.

Now, with Sheffield sweltering in Mediterranean temperatures, this joint Sheffield Theatres/Blackpool Grand Theatre production creates every bit as much ‘fun and laughter’ as its predecessor, thanks not least to a cast as bouncy as beach balls, as breezy as Bridlington.

“Fortnight in the sun”

The opening scene crashes on stage like a tidal wave of songs, live music (from both the actors and a duo above the stage) and over-enthusiastic delivery as the actors shout their way through the scene-setting in a neighbourhood caff. Three bus mechanics – Brylcreemed Edwin (Jim Duah), laddish Steve (Robin Harris) and pre-hippy Cyril (Elliot Mackenzie) discover they can’t afford their fortnight in the sun but will have to make do with Skeggie. That is, until Don (the appealing George Jones) arrives to say he’s got loan of a ‘South Yorkshire People’s Transport’ bus which they can transform into a coach heading for the South of France.

Vigorously singing ‘Seven Days to a Holiday’, the cast arrange four rows of red and gold bus seats on stage in the run-up to their road trip. If there’s disappointment that the bus is make-believe rather than a real double-decker, that evaporates as the play progresses, especially when a model London Red bus starts to wind its way around the stage.

The play – co-directed by Elizabeth Newman and Ben Occhipinti – really starts to take off when, en route to Paris, a Union Jack-covered Mini rises from underneath the stage in a cloud of engine smoke, and out pop the singing trio Do Re Mi (Nis Raza Hamilton, Matthew James Hinchliffe and Trudy Ward). Cue rescue, foot-tapping dance routines and budding (occasionally improbable) romance. Plus the odd escapade at the Italian and Swiss borders, not least after the gang are joined by a young runaway boy – who in fact is a female singer, Barbara, (Fanta Barrie, equally charming in both guises), fleeing her overbearing mother.

“Never less than energetic”

Again leaving much to the imagination, their European adventures are captured by cardboard cut-outs of the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Acropolis – and, in one particularly daft scene, a cardboard ferry carrying (not real) goats. Plus an all-purpose psychedelic backdrop and flashing lights rather than videoed scenes of landmark sites.

Part TV’s Playschool and part Warners Leisure Break (complete with tribute band), the show is also part pantomime, in the scenes involving American showbiz mom Stella (Jane McCarry) and her agent Jerry (Damian Humbley). Stella doesn’t so much go over the top as surge over it in an avalanche of gurning and shouting and exaggerated gestures. But both she and Jerry (a neat foil) certainly earn their keep in a host of ludicrous caricatures, including a lederhosen-clad Tyrolean villager, a crimson-clad, Vespa-riding, flamenco-dancing duo, Italian and Swiss border guards (cue McCarry prowling and growling at the audience).

The ensemble as a whole are never less than energetic, with Edwin, Steve and Cyril recreating not just The Shadows’ familiar songs but also their synchronised step movements. And the costumes beautifully recreate the era, with postcard-bright red slacks, bobby socks, swirling 1950s skirts – and a nod to the revolutionary Sixties in Barbara’s mini-dress.

“Youthful exuberance”

In reality more of a concert than a play, Summer Holiday is stuffed full of cheerful optimism, youthful exuberance, innocent can-do-ism, sometimes corny jokes and catchy pop tunes, including old favourites like ‘Bachelor Boy’, ‘In the Country’, ‘Dancing Shoes’, ‘On The Beach’ and even ‘The Young Ones’, drafted in from Cliff’s earlier film of that name.

If the storyline is as frothy as a seaside milkshake, as insubstantial as bubble-gum, it does now include a gay relationship (homosexuality was banned in the UK until 1967).

As they surf on a gentle wave of nostalgia, many older audience members start to mouth the words. Meanwhile, when Barbara sings the soulful ‘Constantly’, the young couple next to me cuddled up to each other. And when the cast encourage everyone at the end to get up and dance, they all do, young and old alike. Because, like all good summer holidays, this one is pure escapism – and, despite the odd blip, fun.

‘Summer Holiday: The Musical’ is at Sheffield Crucible Theatre until 18th July before transferring to Blackpool Grand
sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/events/summer-holiday-2026
images: Manuel Harlan

Clare Jenkins( Writer )

Clare’s dream is to live in a hotel suite, safe from the bother of boiler breakdowns and crashing computers. Thanks to her husband Stephen McClarence’s work as a national newspaper travel writer, she’s been lucky enough to stay at hotels across the UK, India and many other countries – and has loved (nearly) every minute. As a journalist herself, she was a regular contributor to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour for over 20 years and has made features and documentaries for Radios 3 and 4. She’s also a former theatre reviewer for The Stage magazine and, with her husband, co-author of Teatime at Peggy’s: A Glimpse of Anglo-India.

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