Ain’t no writing strong enough
Shaftesbury Theatre
IT WAS not until the end of the glitzy press night, that this Broadway import delivered a genuinely moving moment. As the American and British cast took their bows during the curtain call they were joined on stage by Motown founder Berry Gordy and his long time collaborator Smokey Robinson.
In a show featuring impersonations and interpretations of the cream of soul including Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, The Temptations, as well as Gordy and Robinson themselves, it was good to see two real McCoys up there, drinking in the obligatory first-night stand- ing ovation. They deserve it, of course.
But much more for the music that drives the West End’s latest jukebox show than the show itself. Gordy himself wrote the script. And here lies both the strength of Charles Randolph-Wright’s production — authenticity and what must be the greatest catalogue in pop music history — but also its weakness, a biographical show that, because it is actually autobiographical, has the sanitised feel of being edited by its subject.
The evening sets its stall out early on with a sing and dance-off between The Supremes and The Temptations. Soon Jackie Wilson is trilling Reet Petite and from then on the music never stops. Heard it on the Grapevine, Please, Mr Postman, My Guy, What’s Going On, the list of hits that came out of the house that Gordy bought in 1959 for $800 is seemingly endless.
Sure, this being a musical, which is, after all, a form that is supposed to tell a story through and with music, there are tiffs between Cedric Neal’s Gordy and Lucy St Louis’s Diana Ross, the star with whom Gordy shared a career and a bed. And there is more than a nod to the racial politics of the time when Robinson (Charl Brown), and other stars from Gordy’s stable, tour America’s south where audiences and indeed everybody, was segregated.
“That’s the low” declares one of the red-neck cops stalking the stage. But these opportunities for real drama are dealt with here like inconveniences. This show wants to get its audience swaying in their seats, clapping in time and wallowing in nostalgia. And no pesky storytelling is going to get in the way of that intention.
The music, as you would expect, is terrifically sung. But, especially in the way that Motown achieved Gordy’s self-proclaimed goal of bridging the racial divide of segregated America, the sense here is of an opportunity lost.