FOUR STARS

 

Carnaby Street was not so much a London thoroughfare as an idea. It was fashion. It was where we mods bought our hipsters and deep-vented mohair suits (Lord John) and our slip-on loafers (Ravel). Our pop heroes of The Who and Small Faces shopped there too. We would read about their activities in the magazine Rave as we played their latest records on the Dansette.

The cultural phenomenon that was Carnaby Street is celebrated in a new rock musical of the same name. Sixteen years in gestation under writer and producer Carl Leighton-Pope, the show opened this month at the Hackney Empire and is now being warmly received at the Wycombe Swan.

To judge from some of the critical raspberries already blown in its direction, this could very well turn out — like We Will Rock You — to be a show more pleasing to the public than the press.

This critic, though, sees no reason to lay into the production. True, it may be a tad plot-lite, and such story as there is comically contrived to tie in with the words of the sixties’ ditties — some 40 of them — that Leighton-Pope has been allowed to use. But these great songs are superbly performed with the backing of a fabulous band whose principal members I shall now proceed to name ahead of the star cast members: Dan Smith (musical director and keyboards), Jonny Bower (lead guitar), Mike Slader (bass guitar) and Tom Connor (drums). Looks-wise (under designer Matthew Wright) I can pay Carnaby Street no better compliment than to say that its 1960s authenticity is confirmed in an engaging tackiness recognisable by anyone who has seen those self-aware audience members prancing away in grainy black-and-white footage of television’s Ready Steady Go!

The fashion world (Quant, Courrèges and the like) only really features after the interval in the boutique of the amusingly camp designer Lily the Pink (Paul Hazel). For the rest, the focus is on Liverpudlian Jude (Matthew Wycliffe) making it big in London after dumping his Merseyside Moll, Penny Lane (Verity Rushworth), for well-connected titled totty Lady Jane (Tricia Adele-Turner).

One of her connections is with silky-smooth pop manager Arnold (Hugo Harold-Harrison), who steers Jude to the top with the help of crafty Cockney Jack (EastEnders’ Aaron Sidwell). Falling by the wayside as a result is Jude’s coke-snorting Welsh rocker band colleague Wild Thing (Mark Pearce), perhaps the most wholly credible character on view.

 

Wycombe Swan
Until Saturday
Tickets: 01494 512 000
wycombeswan.co.uk