
Graham Clark
Music Features Writer
12:00 PM 3rd January 2025
arts
Spend Spend Spend
The Royal Exchange, Manchester
![Rose Galbraith & Alex James Hatton
Photo: Helen Murray]()
Rose Galbraith & Alex James Hatton
Photo: Helen Murray
When Castleford's Viv Nicholson won £152,319 (equivalent to £4.3 million in today's money) on the football pools in September 1961 with her husband Keith she became a famous figure.
When asked by the media what she was going to do with her winnings, she replied, “Spend, spend, spend," but after the champagne stopped flowing, money didn’t always bring happiness.
Her story inspired Steve Brown and Justin Greene to create this musical, with the production receiving its premiere at West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1998 and subsequently winning the Barclays Theatre Award for Best Musical of the Year. The musical later transferred to the West End and has now been reborn in this new, captivating, and big-hearted rags-to-riches-and-back-again story at The Royal Exchange, Manchester.
Performed entirely in the 'in the round' style, the brilliantly talented cast worked superbly to bring the story to life, with Rachel Leskovac playing the older Viv as she looks back at Rose Galbraith playing the young Viv.
Alex James-Hatton as Keith and George Crawford as her first husband were diverse characters, both played with a youthful exuberance.
Nicholson led a chaotic life even before her pool win, pregnant at the age of sixteen, and was on to her second husband when she had the big win; the adage that 'money can’t buy love' appeared to ring true throughout her life. By the time of her death in 2015, she had tied the knot five times, raising the question of whether she was a reliable judge of character.
Suffering domestic abuse from her father and later from one of her husbands, who both died in car crashes, it seemed that luck was not always on her side and happiness was always out of reach. Joe Alessi was dramatic playing her drunken father, then later on becoming the grinning Bruce Forsyth, who presented Nicholson and Keith with their winning cheque.
Under Josh Seymour’s direction, the first half of the musical moves along at a swift pace, moving from the opening scene at the hairdressers, where Nicholson ends up after blowing all the cash, then rolling back the years to the big win and her Castleford upbringing to an ill-fated move to Garforth, "the Shangri La of the north,” where, according to one of the songs, “no one there works down the mine; instead they are all at home drinking vintage red wine.”
The songs might be unforgettable musically, though the lyrical content certainly isn’t. The focus on tone and emotion at times definitely pulled on the heartstrings, moving from what happy moments there were to those of heartbreak and disappointment.
At the end of the show, you might feel like you have been on a roller coaster ride containing many ups and downs, but like all good thrill-seeking rides, you want to get back on and experience it again.
Spend Spend Spend, a musical that will lift any post-Christmas and New Year blues. This winning musical will leave you feeling fully satisfied.
Runs until Saturday 11th January