Strictly Confidential review – Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Craig Revel-Horwood’s Strictly Confidential is a camp and colourful showcase of stunning dancing, extravagant costumes and enough spray tans and fake eyelashes to make the cast of TOWIE look like bare-faced Plain Janes.

Starring former Strictly Come Dancing favourite and veteran Emmerdale actress Lisa Riley, the show promises to let the audience in on some ‘behind-the-scenes secrets’ from the show. Large television screens are used to show famous clips from the television series whilst the dancers take turns to read out excruciatingly cheesy monologues one after another. The premise is startlingly loose for a show of such magnitude (it is set to be performed in ten cities this year) and succeeds only at proving the professional dancers can’t act nearly half as well as they can waltz or tango. Personal tales from Riley about how appearing on Strictly helped her deal with the death of her Mother proved to be popular with the audience but her cringe-worthy sketch about a London tour-bus driver was, without a doubt, the most cringe-worthy part of the night.

However, just like nobody reads Playboy for the articles (despite what they might tell you), nobody buys a ticket to a Strictly Come Dancing show to see anything other than, well, dancing (or, in this case, Artem Chigvintsev flexing his muscles in a kilt). Each of the dance routines were beautifully choreographed and executed to perfection by resident dancers Natalie Lowe, Artem Chigvintsev and Iain Waite. Lisa Riley also managed to hold her own as she shared the stage with some of the world’s finest dancers and had huge support from the audience throughout as a result.

Whilst die-hard fans of the show will love Strictly Confidential, casual fans will leave in awe of the dancing and costumes but giggling at the amateur tackiness of everything else.