The atmosphere is electric it is still 15 minutes to the start of the support act yet occasional communal clapping and chanting....... ‘We want the Osmonds........We want the Osmonds’

Although there are women of all ages in the theatre… and one or two men, the majority are forty or fifty something’s reliving their teenage years.

Suddenly 4 musicians appear and encourage us to chant more and more. With no support act they start their performance, mixing old favourites, some older, less well-known numbers and new songs. Each brother takes his turn to do a solo number. All well dressed Jimmy stands out in full highland dress and fortunately he suits the kilt.

Encouraging the audience to sing along, apart from a ½-hour break, they played and sang from 20-00 to 22-30, so we had a solid two-hour concert, which climaxed in ‘Love me for a Reason’, the encore being ‘Crazy Horses’ and final number ‘I Believe’.  Those lucky enough to be down in the stalls spent the whole concert standing up, many of them either touched, shook hands with or even got a kiss from one or more brother. Those of us further back stood on several occasions screamed and sang regularly, finally jumping and dancing about to ‘Crazy Horses’. How the Dress and Upper circles survived I just don’t know. They were bouncing about like mad.

Looking back to my childhood, spending Saturday nights in the company of the Andy Williams Show with the four older Osmond brothers, then introducing a younger sibling my age, Donny, I have grown up with them. I hope the pleasure continues for years.

Considering those on stage are mostly in their 50’s with (not so) little Jimmy being well in to his 40’s, I really admire the energy and perfection put in to the concert.  Sadly Allan’s illness and Donny’s heavy schedule prevents them performing with the brothers.  The only other thing that struck me as both unusual and a little rude is the lack of a mention of the names of the backing band in the programme, for £7 we get great photographs covering each brother over the ages, some of the whole clan, a double page of them and some fans, less than two pages full of written information and no mention of the backing musicians.

Going from never having seen any of the Osmonds live before ‘The Scottish Royal Variety Performance’ in 2003, I have now seen them 4 times in one guise or another and hope to go on doing so for years.

Merrill, Jay and Wayne

Jimmy