Introducing Our Guest Entertainer Shows

Alongside our regular party sets, we’ve spent the last couple of years building something we’re really proud of: a set of full guest entertainer shows, designed for the main theatres of the ships we work on, rather than the bars and pool decks.

You can see the full list of what we’re currently offering over at the-manchesters.com — and it’s something we’re really wanting to push further this year, so expect to hear a lot more about it from us.

Why We Built These Shows

As The Upbeats Duo, our whole identity is built around vocal harmony — Rachel and I singing genuine two-part harmony together on almost everything we do, which is honestly our biggest USP as a duo. Add in Rachel’s flute, my guitar (and occasionally bass or a bit of piano), and we already had a sound that was a little different to the standard format you often see in cruise entertainment. Building dedicated theatre shows around the best stories of rock and roll legends felt like the natural next step — a chance to properly showcase the harmonies and the instrumentation in a way a 45-minute bar set doesn’t always allow.

What Inspired the Format

The other big part of who we are as performers is that we love talking about music almost as much as we love playing it. Every show we build starts from wanting to tell an actual story — the history behind a song or a band, the writers and the sessions behind a track, the odd chart trivia most audiences have never heard — woven in between the songs themselves rather than just announced from a set list. We’re proper music history geeks, and our shows are really just an excuse to get an audience geeking out right alongside us.

Built for the Stage, Not Just the Bar

Our theatre shows use a different production approach to our regular sets — we build a lot of our own backing tracks specifically to support these longer, more structured formats, layering in the kind of arrangement detail that a full theatre sound and lighting rig can really do justice to. On smaller ships without orchestras onboard, we’re happy to use our incredible backing tracks but for our flagship shows we ideally love to perform with the onboard ships band, to try to make the sound entirely our own.

Take a Look

If you’re a cruise line entertainment programmer, or you’re just curious what a full Upbeats Duo theatre show looks like, head over to the-manchesters.com for the complete rundown of our current shows. We’ll be adding to it as the year goes on, so it’s worth checking back.