Preacher Man is a dreary sermon
MICHAEL MOFFATT SHOW OF THE WEEK
Son Of A Preacher Man
There was an unusual number of empty seats at the first night of Son Of A Preacher Man, and I reckon those who stayed away got it right. Lots of nostalgic jukebox musicals have been constructed around a bunch of great songs including Dreamboats And Petticoats, Jersey Boys and the unstoppable Mamma Mia! but I have rarely seen a more inept effort than this.
This production has no Dusty Springfield biography content, so I presume people came along to hear those resounding numbers she belted out so well. But it’s very hard for anyone to capture the depth of that soulful sensuous voice, so a lot of the songs were sung as duets or in groups. No real complaints there.
One of the five previous Dusty musicals was described as a painful failure that couldn’t even get the wigs right, but I doubt if it was as laboured as this one, set in the present. The script was leaden, the humour was pathetic, the direction was plodding and the scenes all gave the impression they were killing time until the next song was due, so that everything struggled to gel into a unified story.
The performers were well up to scratch, however, some of them combining singing with onstage instrumental contributions, and they put lots of energy into their routines. But the storyline would defy any group. It had the appearance of something strung together by people who couldn’t make up their minds whether the whole thing should be realistic or a fantasy.
Briefly, it tells of an elderly man (who didn’t look elderly) and two women, one a widow and one whose gran has just died. All looking for love —the man is seeking a former male crush he had 40 years previously. Where to start? Strangely, in a music shop once called The Preacher Man, run by a man who’s now dead. He used to give advice on everything. But the shop is now a café run by his son. (son of the Preacher Man – you get it?)
The son naturally doesn’t want to help, but the visitors weirdly, insist, and he eventually agrees, even to the extent of getting in touch with his dead father. And despite setbacks, everybody ended up with the look of love in their eyes. Bliss.
None of the characters came alive as real people. But given the scenario, how could they?