Love & Death: The Songs Of Jim Steinman

Though his name is not universally recognised, the songs of Jim Steinman are touchstones of the epic rock genre – praised and reviled in equal measure for their grandiose theatricality and wild, unhinged passion. His collaborations with Meat Loaf (“Bat Out Of Hell”), Bonnie Tyler (“Holding Out For A Hero”) and Celine Dion (“It’s All Coming Back To Me Now”) remain his most enduringly popular and widely recognised works, but he has also gained something of a cult following for his work on stage musicals (“Whistle Down The Wind”), film soundtracks (“Streets Of Fire”) and one infamously camp solo album (“Bad For Good”).  The heart-on-sleeve earnestness and unapologetic flamboyance that characterises much of Steinman’s work makes him a natural subject for a cabaret show.  

Toby Francis (best known as a member of The Ten Tenors) belts out Steinman’s bombastic rock numbers (like “Bat Out Of Hell”) with a thunderous, commanding authoritativeness. But he also knows when to hold back, playing the softer ballads (such as “Rock N’ Roll Dreams Come Through”) with a poignant, affecting vulnerability. Such is the depth of his emotional commitment to the material, that he manages to redeem some of the Steinman songs commonly dismissed as ridiculously sappy (“Making Love Out Of Nothing At All”) or mindlessly repetitive (“Total Eclipse Of The Heart”). Josie Lane provides a sensual counterpoint to Francis on several smouldering duets and delivers a stridently defiant rendition of the anthemic “Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young”. The piano accompaniment of Andrew Worboys is the icing on a very rich musical cake.

The stage patter is the one place where the show stumbles a bit. In between songs, Francis delivers monologues in character as Steinman, most of which focus on the songwriter’s failed attempts to secure funding for a stage musical called “Neverland” (a post-apocalyptic rock reimagining of “Peter Pan”). Francis captures Steinman’s nerdy tendencies well enough, but doesn’t quite get the oddball humour of the man and sometimes comes across as a bit too whiny. Still, the details of Steinman’s unproduced musical contained in these monologues will be of interest to anyone with even a slight interest in theatre and the projections used to illustrate the songwriter’s ideas are visually striking. 

Benjamin Orchard

Photographer: Kurt Sneddon