Well, it makes a change from the stage
musical of the movie: this is the stage musical of the compilation CD.
The selection of late 1950s/early ’60s pop classics has shifted
hundreds of thousands of copies, and ever-canny producer Bill Kenwright
has covered all his bases by putting together a show that combines
songs for the late-middle-aged market with performers from
The X Factor,
Emmerdale and
Hollyoaks and a book by TV comedy
big-hitters Laurence Marks & Maurice Gran.
This isn’t simply a mock-concert or a staged slice of biography or
history. The story may be flimsy, the kind of thing that makes
Expresso Bongo look like Ingmar
Bergman, but it
is a story.
Indeed, the tale of teen boy and teen girl finally getting together
after all those nights down the local youth club in 1961 is
deliberately stereotypical, but Marks & Gran treat their brief with
a playful respect and come up with a number of good lines. (“I’m free
Saturday night,” announces a predatory girl, to which her friend
ripostes, “Rest of the week she’s half a crown.”) The atmosphere is
augmented by using a live onstage band drawn from the performers rather
than hiding them behind drapes, in the pit or worst of all
pre-recording them, and the clutch of original numbers are efficient
pastiches.
Scott Bruton is reasonably appealing as protagonist Bobby, and has a
more than fair singing voice. As his eventually-beloved Laura, Daisy
Wood-Davis in her professional stage debut looks so plausible in a
school uniform that an unintended note of Humbert & Lolita is
struck when Ben Freeman’s interloper Norman hits on her. (In an
acknowledgement of the slightly askew casting, Norman acknowledges
Laura’s assertion that she is nearly sixteen with “And I’m nearly thi—
er, twenty.”) As befits his greater experience, Freeman has a more
diverse vocal arsenal, even pastiching the style of The Platters’ Tony
Williams on “The Great Pretender”. In contrast, Jennifer Biddall and
Emma Hatton too often let loose the brief, anachronistic yelp all too
common amongst contemporary singers on a particularly belted-out
syllable. There may not be the market to ensure
Dreamboats a protracted run, but it
has done well on tour and, Lord knows, there is more mystifying and
less deserving fare currently playing in some major houses.
Written for the Financial
Times.