Exquisite music conceals a hole in turbulent story
The Drifters Girl Garrick Theatre, London WC2
★★★★★
‘Aformidable businesswoman,” is how one obituary summed up Faye Treadwell in 2011. Given her success and staying power, managing the long-lived R&b/soul vocal group The Drifters from 1967, through multiple iterations, until she retired in 2001, that’s a compliment as well as a character assessment.
The context of her rise from a humble background as the daughter of an Arkansas Baptist minister to record industry power-player called for an inner grit contrasting with the honeyed sounds the group purveyed: sexism, racism and narrow assumptions were the battlefields she fought across.
If you take The Drifters’ gemstuffed back-catalogue and thread it through her story, along with the group’s, have you enough for a winning jukebox musical? Shows about talented women forging their path have proved big hits – witness
Tina, celebrating la Turner, or
Beautiful: The Carole King Story. Equally, as with the Berry Gordy story in Motown: The Musical, audiences respond to tuneful work charting the development of the music industry.
Judging by this world premiere production, directed by Jonathan Church, a lot of the necessary elements are in place for an evening that combines moments of visual style and aural satisfaction with a wellinformed account of pioneering triumph. But while the audience at the Garrick was on its feet at the end, I rose with a spot of hesitation.
The sound of the show, I should declare, is exquisite, Beverley Knight leading the way and raising the roof at points in the title role. Yet the dramatic balance doesn’t feel quite right yet. As brought to life by an incredibly dynamic, shape-shifting quartet of actors – Adam J Bernard, Tarinn Callender, Matt Henry and Tosh Wanogho-maud – the changing roster of men in the line-up, and in Treadwell’s life, repeatedly woo us with calculated charm.
But Knight has a tougher time finding an equivalent warmth in someone so busy striving in a male-dominated profession that her personality tips into a one-note hard-headedness. The briskness of the dialogue accentuates what natural brusqueness she must have had. The inquiring girlhood figure of daughter Tina Treadwell is used as a simple theatrical catalyst, flitting the stage and prompting a chronological spin through the years, unravelling a tale that can get quite complex and corporate – line-ups abruptly changed, litigation over ownership of the Drifters mantle. Ed Curtis’s book shows the daughter admiring her mother but also taken aback. We learn of underpaid group members and a time when Treadwell didn’t heed the pleas of closeted singer Rudy Lewis, before his death at the age of 27.
Rather like the revolving-doors group itself, there’s something of a gap where the show’s core identity should be; missing pieces of the psychological jigsaw. Yet, that’s at once well concealed and compensated for by the blasts from the past. Whatever your taste, a seductive nostalgia is stirred watching the sharp-suited, surefooted and synchro-sashaying crooners in action (choreography, superb, by Karen Bruce).
If some of the golden oldies look and sound samey, the highlights are unforgettable. Wanogho-maud as Ben E King makes Stand by Me sound fresh off the vinyl-presses; and, in the guise of Lewis, delivers a rendition of In the Land of Make Believe loaded with aching subtext. Despite the character’s overall limitations, Knight musters a fully rounded soulfulness in song, closing the first half with a belting weepie I Don’t Want to Go On Without You and bolstering the second with Harlem Child. If the script afforded the same depth and detail in the under-sung Treadwell’s day-to-day dealings, this could stand as tall as the best shows in town.
Booking to March 26. Tickets: 0330 333 4811; nimaxtheatres.com