Superior jukebox show shines a light on a tortured soul
Dusty: The Dusty Springfield Musical Theatre Royal, Bath
Jonathan Harvey’s new study of the legendary British singer begins not at the start of her life or career, but midway through. A TV audience is waiting for one of the greatest soul singers Britain ever produced to walk on stage and deliver her signature powerhouse performance for a live TV recording of the Sixties TV music programme Ready Steady Go! But where is their idol? Having a nervous breakdown in the bathroom.
This discrepancy – between the beehived, kohl-eyed, gilded public persona of Mary O’brien, as she was born in 1939, and her often terrified, self-loathing, private self – runs throughout this smart new musical, which shines a probing torch on the singer’s stubborn perfectionism, sexuality, alcoholism and consuming feelings of rivalry with the great black soul singers such as Aretha Franklin she so adored.
Dusty, who in 1965 was the bestselling female singer in the world, and who, after lapsing into boozy obscurity in the late Seventies, enjoyed a late career renaissance after recording What Have I Done to Deserve This? with the Pet Shop Boys in 1987, has been ill-served by the theatre of late, with two recent woeful attempts to present her life and career on stage. This superior jukebox show, directed with élan by Maria Friedman, goes some way to make amends.
It also boasts an outstanding performance from Katherine Kingsley as the blue-eyed soul singer for whom pop provided a transfigurative escape from her Catholic upbringing and her exacting mother (a nicely judged Roberta Taylor); who insisted on recording I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself in the lavatory because the acoustics were better; and whose almost indecently opulent songs contained always a naked streak of disenchantment and yearning. That rousing, exquisite music is given an explicit and sometimes crudely shoehorned autobiographical resonance by Harvey. Dusty’s infamous refusal to sing to segregated audiences in Cape Town in 1964 (she was deported because of it), for instance, segues clumsily into a rendition of You Don’t Own Me. Elsewhere, The Look of Love beautifully becomes the soundtrack to a lesbian seduction, while I Close My Eyes is performed, hypnotically, in a sultry, drug-addled haze. Tom Pye’s set combines a sprightly, geometric Sixties pop art aesthetic with video projections – including footage of Dusty’s funeral in 1999 – while Tim Jackson’s choreography embodies the superficial, brightlycoloured surfaces of Sixties pop culture in ways that somehow only emphasise the poignant incongruity of Dusty’s success, with her highnecked clothing, enormous soul voice and tortured sense of self.
It’s Kingsley who makes the show though. She makes Dusty’s music – and Dusty herself – soar.
Until Sat then on tour until July 28; dustyspringfield musical.com