Something tells me something’s gonna happen…

Cilla The Musical

If you’re looking for spine-tingling moments in Edinburgh theatre this week, there are probably two on offer; and intriguingly, both are based on the history of the 1960s. One is the horrible, backwardlooking sound of Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech of 1968, unforgettably re-created by Ian Mcdiarmid in What Shadows at the Lyceum.

And the other – bursting with all the positive, forwardlooking, youthful energy of that same period – is the electrifying moment in Cilla The Musical, at the Playhouse, when a brilliant Kara Lily Hayworth, playing the “people’s diva” from Liverpool, opens her lungs to the max and belts out Anyone Who Had A Heart, the mighty ballad that, in February 1964, first took Cilla to No. 1.

Premiered in Liverpool last month, Cilla The Musical is essentially a soft-hearted musical biopic, based by writerjeffpopeonhisown2014television miniseries about Cilla. The story is built around Cilla’s relationship with her husband and manager Bobby Willis, beautifully played by Carl Au, who adored her from the first moment he saw her in a tiny Liverpool club, and stayed true even during the heady midsixties years when she was being managed by the charismatic Brian Epstein.

And if the narrative reaches a memorable climax at the end of the first act, with Cilla’s first No. 1, it struggles to find the same shape and coherence in the longer and darker second half, when Cilla and Bobby face tensions in their relationship, and the tragedy of Epstein’s untimely death.

The plot, which ends in 1967, denies us even a resolving glimpse of Cilla and Bobby’s later happiness; and the second-half musical arrangements also seem incoherent and over-lush, sometimes drowning out Hayworth’s brilliant voice.

For all that, though, Cilla The Musical is a generous, heart-