Show that’s jammin’ in the Marley hits
HOLLAND’S Mitchell Brunings is astonisingly good as Bob Marley in a musical about the Jamaican reggae star.
Mr Brunings, done up in thick dreadlocks, may not be an exact fit physically, being more muscular than Marley, but in his singing and total immersion in the role he is eerily well cast.
So much current theatre, particularly in the state-funded sector, is preachy and over-wordy. If subjected to another droning three-hour job about sexual identity, race relations or dystopianism, I may scream.
What a relief, therefore, to encounter a show as unashamedly direct as this, devoted to giving the audience an evening’s throbbing fun. One Love also has a big heart and, along the way, makes a powerful plea for national unity at times of political stress.
Writer/director Kwame Kwei-Armah does not overload the script with exposition. We meet Marley already adult, he and his Wailers struggling on $30-a-night gigs in the early Seventies. They beat up a local disc jockey until he agrees to play their records on the radio.
The focus is on the period of Marley’s collaboration with producer Chris Blackwell (played by Alex Robertson) when he became caught in the acrid political struggle between Jamaican prime minister Michael Manley (Adrian Irvine) and his rival edward Seaga (Simeon Truby).
This nearly got Marley assassinated, but he eventually prevailed on Manley and Seaga to join him on stage at a charity concert and shake hands. Given the week we have just had, I found that moment powerful.
PLAYWRIGHT Kwei-Armah is shrewd enough to see that the music’s the thing. The show delivers almost 30 Marley hits, played by a fine band.
Little fuss is made of Marley’s Rastafarian religious beliefs, or the illness that would kill him in his mid-30s (we are spared that untimely decline).
Instead, the whole thing is suffused with a floaty benevolence, an amiable spirituality which peaks with a trip to ethiopia. his romantic infidelities are depicted with a fling with a beauty queen. Marley’s wife Rita ( Alexia Khadime) needed her patience.
Above all this radiates the figure of Mr Brunings’ Bob, sucking on Zeppelin-sized joints as he yields to patriotic duty. First and foremost, Marley was an artist who had an ear for a seductive tune. By the end, the Rep was jamming, Mr Brunings in the middle of the audience, fist raised as he sang One Love.
SHARON D. CLARKE and her voice are the main reason for catching a Southwark Playhouse revival of The Life, a Cy Coleman musical about hookers in eighties New York.
The story is a bit jaded and depressing — pimps being horrible to vulnerable women — and the show, at almost three hours, could do with losing 30 minutes, but Miss Clarke and her Maserati engine of a voice are memorable. She plays Sonja, a tired old gal who calculates she has had more than 15,000 lovers (more, even, than Nick Clegg!). Sonja acts as protectress to some of the other women, particularly one called Queen (T’Shan Williams, voice a little sharp in places).
The pimps include ferretty little Fleetwood (David Albury) and big guy Memphis (Cornell S. John, impressive stage presence). Director Michael Blakemore, 88, who directed this show on Broadway in 1997, keeps the small stage clear, Manhattan being deftly suggested by overhead photo boards. The tidy band is hidden behind them.
COLEMAN’S music is Seventies-pumpy, full of brass, with salty lyrics by Ira Gasman. The adult subject matter ensures things never become sentimental — with lines such as ‘you’ve got to use every friend as a means to an end’, we are in cynical territory much of the time — but the score could do with a proper hit.
The best of the songs are The Oldest Profession and Why Don’t They Leave Us Alone?
Some of the minor characters are on the clumpy side — some of them more like prop forwards than ladies of the night — but Joanna Woodward, Charlotte Reavey, Omari Douglas and Jo Servi catch the eye.