Ooh, I look just like Buddy Holly

by Sarah Linney
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Buddy Holly died at 22, after a musical career lasting just four years.

Yet in that time, as one of the pioneers of 1950s rock and roll, he changed the face of popular music, influencing the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan and recording so prolifically that his record label was releasing music for a decade after he died.

Such is the life immortalised in the biopic The Buddy Holly Story, which came to the Marlowe Theatre last month.

I’d seen it before, remembered little about it, for some reason decided to go again even though I don’t know that much of Holly’s music. I’m glad I did.

The first half of the show focuses on Holly and the Crickets’ burgeoning career, their desire to play rock and roll rather than country, and their contribution to bridging the gap, through music, between black and white in a still-segregated USA. The Crickets accidentally became one of the first white acts to play the Harlem Apollo, then a ‘black’ venue, in 1957 after the booker mistook them for another group and after being initially booed, won the audience over.

Glen Joseph made an endearingly offbeat Buddy when I saw the musical in 2017, but the same can’t be said for A J Jenks, who just comes over a bit odd and slightly oily, his whirlwind courtship of Maria Elena seeming creepy rather than romantic. In the first half the band change the name of their song from Sandy Lou to Peggy Sue because the drummer’s girlfriend has promised she will “put out” if he does; I don’t know if I found this funny six years ago, but it just made me uncomfortable now, and I was kind of surprised that a modern audience still laughed at it. (The story’s made up anyway, according to the lady in question.)

But there is a star of the show, and it’s Miguel Angel as Ritchie Valens, the Latin American singer who dies in the plane crash with Holly. Angel isn’t just an incredible dancer – he was one of the choreographers for the show – he seems to be almost permanently smiling, and exudes a happiness and likeability that is incredibly charming. Honourable mentions go to Christopher Chandler as larger-than-life singer The Big Bopper – the third casualty of the crash – and Laura-Dene Perryman, whose dancing was something else in its sheer energy.

For most of the second half, it’s February 3, 1959 and we’re in Clear Lake, Iowa at Bopper, Valens and Holly’s final gig. They perform a top-class succession of rock and roll hits, both their own (La Bamba, Chantilly Lace, Heartbeat) and other people’s (Johnny B Goode) – it’s a fabulously fun celebration of some of the best music ever made. That’s what going to the show gave me above all – a renewed appreciation for and interest in the music of that era.

But we all know what’s going to happen, and the musical ends on a tragic note, with the announcement that all three performers died in a plane crash after the concert. If Holly was young at 22, he was a veteran compared with Valens, who was 17.

And yet, I’ve been listening to their music, and that of their contemporaries, ever since the show. Don Maclean named the day of the crash The Day The Music Died in his 1971 hit American Pie. Heartbeat, Every Day, La Bamba, Chantilly Lace, That’ll Be The Day? I’d argue that that music is very much alive.

Coppelia: ballet is what I think taking drugs must be like

by Sarah Linney

Why take LSD when you could just go to the ballet?

Don’t get me wrong, I like ballet – and I really enjoyed Coppelia’s beautiful dancing, music and colourful costumes. It’s just that you have to leave any expectations of having the faintest clue what’s happening at the door.

Judging by other ballets I’ve seen – most notably the Nutcracker – plot and credibility are, perhaps, not central to the genre. Coppelia centres around a wooden doll of the same name, with whom our hero, Franz, becomes infatuated (depending on the men in your life, some viewers may not even find this stretches credibility). His girlfriend, who goes by the brilliant name of Swanhilda, feels jealous, so she breaks into the craftsman’s studio, but gets trapped and ends up having to pretend to be the doll.

This is all in the first half. And like I say, it’s highly enjoyable, with exquisite performances from the two leads. Franz actually comes across as quite sweet, and I keep having to remind myself that NO, HE’S IN LOVE WITH A DOLL.

In the second half, all semblance of plot is abandoned; I have to ask my mum what’s happening, only for her to reply, “I don’t know”. I’m not really sure that anything is, in particular. But that doesn’t matter; it’s an exuberant and highly impressive pageant of dance and colour, with an astonishing series of pirouettes by Swanhilda that you would have thought was physically impossible.

It’s all completely bonkers, but enjoyably so. And insofar as I could follow what was happening, it seems to end happily – even for the doll.

 

Oh, what a night! The Jersey Boys is amazing again

I’ve seen the Jersey Boys three times, and Mum and I booked tickets for this year’s performance more than a year in advance. We are not even borderline obsessed, just obsessed.

The show has everything: a fabulous soundtrack of classic pop songs, a very funny script,  colourful 60s customes, but most of all, a story not just way more hard-hitting than your average musical, but almost Shakespearean in its scope.

Forget the Beatles on LSD and Oasis and Blur’s playground scraps: the Four Seasons were proper trouble. The group had links to the Mafia, were friends with mob boss and serial murderer Gyp DeCarlo, and members Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi had both spent time in jail. (When writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice began work on the musical, they received an anonymous phonecall making it clear that it would be wise to portray DeCarlo in a “respectful” manner.) None of this was public knowledge until Brickman and Elice began work on the musical in the 2000s; had it come out in the 1960s, it would have likely have spelled the end of the band, whose sharp suits and upbeat songs, rendered by Valli in his unique falsetto, gave no clue as to the murky goings-on underneath.

Nonetheless, the first half of the musical is humorous and happy; DeVito and Massi manage to come out and stay out of prison, the group finally gets a record deal and stardom comes knocking. All four leads are pretty flawless, with Michael Watson getting Valli’s voice almost bang on and bringing an endearing mixture of vulnerability and strength to the role. Declan Egan rounded out goody-two-shoes (by the Four Seasons’ standards, that’s anyone without a police record) songwriting maestro Bob Gaudio with a twinkling, self-deprecating humour that I’m not sure I’ve seen in previous Gaudios.

Simon Bailey was thoroughly unpleasant as the bullying DeVito, yet nonetheless rounded – despite all his flaws, DeVito was the one who masterminded, hustled for and drove the group’s success. But it was Lewis Griffiths, previously seen in Dirty Dancing, who was a revelation to me, bringing a dry sense of humour and a surprising emotional range to Massi, who could be wooden and one-dimensional in the wrong hands. DeVito is supposed to be the cocky charmer, yet it was Griffiths who, as he masterfully broke into a church to help Frankie hone his singing, suddenly made a criminal record seem very attractive.

Fame was not the group’s salvation, however, and the second half is much bleaker: DeVito’s $150,000 gambling debts finally catch up with him, prompting the dissolution of the group in its original form. This is where the show elevates itself from just a pop biopic to a story about the human condition, taking in themes of loyalty, self-sacrifice and yes, morality, made all the more powerful by the quartet’s history of criminal behaviour. Valli decides that the group will take on DeVito’s debts and work to pay them off, and Massi tells the audience: “If you don’t understand why someone would do that, you ain’t from Jersey.” It is here that Valli really comes into his own, the kid who once surprised DeVito by standing up to him with the words “I ain’t your little brother” now showing that, for all the latter’s posturing, Valli is the real Big Man in Town.

The second half also shows how fame affected the group, as Valli’s marriage and family fall apart and Massi’s children end up being cared for by relatives and thinking he is their uncle – “You sell 100 million records. See how you handle it.” One by one, everybody leaves Valli: DeVito, Massi, his wife, his girlfriend, Gaudio (who stops performing but keeps on producing and songwriting), each of them walking alone across the gantry at the back of the stage as Valli, at the front, keeps the show on the road. Finally and most tragically, his daughter Francine dies of an overdose at 22, on the cusp of her own never-to-be-realised singing career.

All this might make the Jersey Boys sound hard going, but it’s absolutely not; it’s funny, clever and ultimately upbeat, ending with the now-reconciled group being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s not a sanitised Hollywood tale, but a true story about flawed, relatable human beings messing up but carrying on, getting up again when they get knocked down. They may have been morally airbrushed 50 years ago, but history tells a different tale: one of men made by their imperfections. And if that isn’t a good story, I don’t know what is.

 

The Play That Goes Wrong is actually perfect

“Go and see The Play That Goes Wrong,” was my brother’s enthusiastic recommendation. “I just could not stop laughing.”

I knew if he found it funny, I probably would too; and I wasn’t disappointed. The Play That Goes Wrong is hilarious.

As you might guess from its title, it concerns the attempts of the hapless Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society to stage a 1920s murder mystery in which just about everything that could go wrong, does: from collapsing sets to missing props to dozens of other disasters which I won’t spoil for you.

The entire cast are brilliant and extract the full comedy potential from every line in the supremely clever, perfectly conceived script. A particular favourite was Alastair Kirton, as Cecil, who beamed delightedly at the audience every time he made us laugh.

The programme is also a joy – the first half is a spoof Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society effort, complete with cast biographies, interviews, reviews from the Cornley Express and adverts (“Cornley Sunam Balti House – There’s Naan finer”.)

That said, I wouldn’t rank it quite up there with Don’t Dress For Dinner or even One Man, Two Guv’nors, both of which have also graced the Marlowe in recent years. Occasionally, as you found yourself laughing at someone getting knocked out for the 176th time, the jokes felt ever so slightly repetitive.

But that really is a tiny quibble, as it never stopped me laughing – not one bit. The show’s Canterbury run is now over but you can catch it in London and on tour around the UK.