Lenny Henry’s performance in Othello a few years ago proved he could do more than small-screen comedy drama, and his West End performance more recently in August Wilson’s Fences was a revelation. The down side of this is that, now we know how much he is capable of delivering onstage, something more in keeping with his primary work as a comedian such as Rudy’s Rare Records is going to seem not just safe but, for want of a kinder term, even a little paltry.
    
Four series of Rudy’s have now run on BBC Radio 4, so the cast are already comfortable in their roles. Larrington Walker as first-wave Jamaican immigrant Rudy, maintaining his shop in Handsworth in Birmingham despite virtually zero business, is all scrawny old-codger braggadocio, bantering with long-suffering girlfriend Doreen (Lorna Gayle), Trinidadian shopkeeper friend Clifton (Jeffery Kissoon), and in particular with Henry as son Adam, who after a failed marriage and a patchy career as an actor has returned from London with his teenage son as Rudy’s carer, conscience and loving nemesis.
    
Paulette Randall has much less directing to do here than she did on Fences. This is largely because the plot is hardly taxing, consisting as it does of the old “Oh, no, the bills are due and the developers want to tear the place down; how can we survive? – Let’s do a show right here!” chestnut. The dialogue, by Danny Robins (Henry’s co-writer on the radio version), shows social awareness with a number of sardonic observations about racism, and above all boasts a huge heart. But heart isn’t enough. Plausible characters need plausible situations. The second half is downright perfunctory, introducing the benefit-concert idea with a “With one bound he was free” suddenness and devoting the bulk of the stage time to musical numbers rather than dramatic development. The songs selected are hardly rare nuggets either, being the likes of Al Green’s “Here I Am (Come And Take Me)” and Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”, but a mainstream show needs well-known numbers rather than the sort of stuff Rudy would stock. It’s an entertaining and heartening evening, to be sure; it’s just that, given Henry’s now obvious potential, it could be so much more. London audiences can judge in a few weeks when it arrives at co-producer the Hackney Empire.
    
Written for the Financial Times.