3 STARS, Apr 24-28. An exuberant new musical about love, woven around the timeless soulful songs of Dusty Springfield, says Andrew Morris
Don’t go to see Son of a Preacher Man if you love legendary 60s soul singer Dusty Springfield and are expecting to discover more about the woman behind the timelessly poignant songs.
As writer Warner Brown says in the programme notes: ‘The story came first, and then I thought this has got to be as if those (Dusty) songs were written for a musical. You come to a point where you need to go into song, and there was a Dusty song to fit it.’
The story is one of love in all its multifaceted glory – thwarted, unrequited, lustful and fulfilled – rooted in the 1960s and trying to bloom now. Three strangers are each drawn to Dean Street in London’s Soho, searching for the building and soul of record shop Preacher Man, when vinyl and Dusty were in their prime.
Paul (Michael Howe) fell in love with Jack here, but times were different then and Paul has spent the intervening 50 years mostly with regrets and loneliness. Widowed teacher Alison (Michelle Gayle) is perilously close to falling into an unwise relationship with one of her pupils. Young Kat (Alice Barlow) was raised by her grandmother, and is now searching for love with very contemporary gadgets.
All of them believe the wisdom-dispensing old owner of Preacher Man can provide answers to their own lovelorn dilemmas. But the building is now the soulless Double Shot coffee shop, managed by hapless and enigmatic Simon (Nigel Richards), the – yes, you’ve guessed – Son of a Preacher Man.
Simon disappears mysteriously to the flat upstairs every day, from 2 pm to 6 pm, leaving the Double Shot to be run by the frothy singing Cappuccino Sisters (Michelle Long, Kate Hardisty and Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong). And yet our love-hunting trio still expect Simon to summon up the wisdom of his father and help them on their amorous ways.
The thread for each story unravels into an inevitably happy conclusion, though thankfully not entirely in directions the audience might expect.
Craig Revel Horwood is the Director, and he must shoulder blame for the leaden Strictly-type dance lifts in some mediocre choreography, a distinct lack of political correctness and some Pantomime-like sequences throughout the production. I Just Didn’t Know What to Do With Myself during the misjudged and tacky twerking routine when Kat, dressed more as a naughty French maid than a would-be waitress, tries to seduce the muscular bekilted plumber (Liam Vincent-Kilbride) she has met online. Sadly, there was Nowhere to Run.
But the energetic cast wholeheartedly embrace the flimsy material, and how can you not enjoy a couple of hours singing along to Dusty classics, including I Close my Eyes and Count to Ten, I Only Want to be With You, In the Middle of Nowhere and You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me. And the musical finally engages the audience fully during the rousing finale, with Kat’s soulful voice leading the company in a hand-clapping gospel-like version of Son of a Preacher Man.
Set and costume designer Morgan Large deserves credit for the stage design, vibrant vinyl-filled 1960s morphing seamlessly into hipster caffeine-fuelled contemporary Soho.
By the way, Simon has been hiding away above the Double Shot, writing the story of his Preacher Man father for 4 hours every day. If only Warner Brown had been so conscientious, he might have created something a little more deserving of Dusty’s priceless songbook.
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