NEVER MIND THE MOUNTAIN, OVER THE ROAD CHICHESTER ROCKS
Now right here’s an ideal gig for us 1970’s leftovers, although I think at this time’s younger rockers may also love the shiny leather-based pants off it. For it has every part for at this time: feminine friendship defying patriarchy, protesters with placards on the streets decrying poverty and monarchy, and a condemnation of male profiteering on the expertise and appears of younger girls. Oh, and a few storming rock numbers outdated and new, by Howard Schuman and Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay. Dominic Cooke and musical supervisor Nigel Lilley relatively brilliantly don’t enable them to cease the story lifeless by working them too lengthy (the principle fault, bear in mind, of Standing on the Sky’s Edge). Sometimes only a verse or an introduction or reprise hits us as the story of three girls gallops on. We need extra each time, after which get it because the story evolves.
The play is Chloe Moss’ spinoff from the well-known Nineteen Seventies TV sequence ROCK FOLLIES, an occasion for which individuals hurried again from work with a view to share a number of sequence’-worth of the saga. It tracked the fortunes of three younger girls forming a fictional rock group – as associates, not manufactured-assembled merchandise just like the Spice Girls. It was a time when regardless of the US Supremes and Ronettes, British ladies had been anticipated to be backing acts for male rock gods. It mesmerized folks: those that had been round then had been positively a-quiver with pleasure on recognizing the flaming locks of one of many originals, Rula Lenska, and subsequent to her the sequence’ creator, the true Schuman.
We meet our three first as they stomp out of a impolite director’s drained refrain line in spangled pink boxer shorts, and resolve to do their very own factor. There’s Zizi Strallen’s “Q”, who lives with a parasitic no-hope bodybuilder and does ooh-Mr-Milkman porn movies, albeit with lot of “beige Lycra between us”. There’s Angela Marie Hurst’s Dee who lives in a really ’70s commune in a squat, all menstruation-haikus and chakras, and Carly Bawden’s Anna. She is posher than them, went to Cambridge, writes songs and has a patronizing husband who reckons she’s “more Susan Hampshire than Suzi Quattro”.
And off they go: all nice movers and superb voices ( Hurst is really exceptional), falling in with candy homosexual Harry (Samuel Barnett, a delight) as their musical director, and falling out with their blokes. Though Stephenson Ardern-Sodje’s Spike does stick by Dee, after one lapse when one other lass unblocks his chakras. The trio get gigs, exhaust themselves on lowgrade excursions, audition for document labels and get found and bullied into fame by the agent Kitty (Tamsin Carroll magnificently scary in a 70s Purdey wig). She’s a sister at coronary heart, however there’s additionally Fred Haig as nasty pink-suited David , who undermines them by shoehorning in Philippa Stefani as his girlfriend Roxy, whereas Dee struggles together with her conscience over changing harmonies, Q tries to mediate their weary rows (Strallen is fabulously likeable) and Anna hits the booze and coke.
It’s not significantly deep, however a fairytale rock epic from a previous time which stays completely one for our personal, and has some great set-pieces. Gasp at Sebastian Torkia as a type of satanic Jethro Tull wannabe who makes them be a backing group in cat costumes rising from dustbins. Enjoy their defiance of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee: this might baffle the brand new technology, however we outdated salts bear in mind all too properly the punkish counterculture fury of that point which makes lots of at this time’s genteel whining points really feel a bit moist (I make no judgement, however merely document the thought that went by way of my head at that individual second). There are some pretty considerate, lyrical songs in addition to rock stormers, and the ensemble and solid change costume in seconds to leap gloriously around the three girls’s story : as stylists, audiences, demonstrators, all flowing with energetic joyful pace. Serious enjoyable.
Box workplace cft.org.uk to 26 August
Rating 4.
