David Essex evidently still has quite a following, and you sense that his new musical could have been much worse and still got a standing ovation from his Wolverhampton fans.
And it certainly is his musical, in which he is credited with music and lyrics as well as playing the starring role. Various old Essex favourites are recycled alongside new material but his saccharine festive hit A Winter’s Tale, which opens and closes the show, is by Tim Rice and Mike Batt.
Essex plays Levi, a grizzled funfair proprietor racked with guilt over the death of his wife in a Wall of Death motorcycle accident and plagued by his rebellious son, Jack, who wants to revamp the flagging fair.
Irish fortune-teller Rosa has set her sights on Levi for herself and Jack for her daughter Mary, but neither is playing ball. Jack has dangerously set his sights on Alice, the daughter of dodgy businessman Harvey.
It clearly doesn’t bode well, but I must admit I didn’t see the tragedy’s classic resolution coming.
There are some other likeable things about the show, too – it looks good, is populated with plausible characters (the setting is 1978) and has extraordinarily good sound.
This is a karaoke musical, with no live band but performed to a pre-recorded backing track (actually it could as easily have been mimed as far as I could tell, with no obvious microphones).
In places the intricate sound design (by Sebastian Frost) gave us a three-dimensional experience, with sound effects as well as music, up in the circle.
If only the same care had been devoted to the lyrics. With lines like “The pain was like no other/The day I lost my mother...” and “He said he’d find a bedsit flat/Somewhere up north, or something like that...” they are clunky to say the least.
Clearly Essex’s many fans aren’t going to mind that, and he is certainly quite an imposing figure, with his wobbly old-bloke’s voice giving the show a welcome rougher grain than the stereotypical music-theatre formula.
Paul-Ryan Carberry, making his professional debut, brings some authentic charisma to the role of Jack.
Running time: Two hours, 30 minutes. Until Saturday. Also at Birmingham Hippodrome from March 9-14.
