How much is too much? Not a question that was ever asked in the making of this show, and it is all the better for it. As soon as you think you’ve reached peak glitter and sass, Johannes Radebe ups the voltage. This show is stadium energy, on a regional tour scale, with the intimacy of a cabaret club. Radebe is a beloved member of the Strictly Come Dancing professional cast, but everyone in this room knows that. The audience are Jojo’s BFFs, joining in the chat and shouting out their adoration: it’s a giant love-in.
Freedom Unleashed is the follow-up to last year’s Freedom show. Though arguably not as strong as the original, it’s great there’s more time spent with African dance and music – pantsula and kizomba dance, the great Miriam Makeba – as well as the shiny, happy, sometimes cheesy, Strictly-style sketches.
Radebe is as magnetic as ever. “I’m most alive when I’m dancing,” he tells us, and you can see it, joy and life force boiling over. His hips move as if they’re trying to escape from his body. At the same time there’s strict discipline and intent in every muscle; resistance and release at play all the time.
There’s a joke early on about Radebe being chosen to ring the school bell and being “the anointed one”, and that’s how he dances. Not in terms of ego, more like he’s channelling a higher power, his presence shockingly vivid compared to the ensemble around him, as he appears in one glorious outfit after the next – his emergence as a scarily fabulous gold-encrusted Simba (from the Lion King, another anointed one) is a real coup de theatre.
The rest of the cast struggle to match him – not for lack of commitment, energy or stamina. They nail the steps of each style, but mastering the feel, the weight, the centre of gravity, is different. On one hand, to have men here able to do ballroom in tailcoats and vogueing in leopard print catsuits and heels is quite something, but the African styles, for example, are generally less well served by dancers mostly coming from musical theatre. This is a show, though, modelled on one unique individual. And Radebe is in his absolute element.
At the Peacock theatre to 8 April, then touring to 28 May
