“Turns the fun factor all the way up to 11”
REVIEWS BY SAM MARLOWE MINERVA THEATRE, CHICHESTER
1970s TV hit becomes a galvanising new musical in this female-led story of rock’n’roll rise and fall
Just before punk blew up the British music scene in a glorious snarl of noise, gob, amphetamine, anarchy and attitude, there was the Little Ladies – fictional creation of screenwriter Howard Schuman and Andy Mackay, better known as founder member and saxophonist of Roxy Music. In ITV’s Rock Follies, which swaggered on to small screens in 1976, Anna, Dee and Q, a trio of actors on their uppers, stepped away from their frustrated stage careers and unsatisfactory men, and into the limelight as a convention-defying girl band, fighting to make the big time and keep their integrity intact.
This new musical based on the TV series, with a book by Chloë Moss wrapped around Schumann and Mackay’s original songs, follows a familiar stardust-sprinkled, rise-and-fall narrative arc; shades of Me Too and 21st-century activism are superimposed over its spirit of 1970s socio-political subversion. In a vivid, galvanisingly rough-edged production by Dominic Cooke, it is a great rollercoaster ride, even if it is rickety enough to be in danger of flying off the rails.
In a musical about music, it is vital that the numbers are strong, and although Moss integrates the Little Ladies’ set list skilfully into the storytelling, neither the tunes nor the lyrics are robust enough to supply much dramatic ballast. The songs are throwaway pastiche – whether it’s the dire, twee musical Broadway Annie, on which our three sheroes meet as chorus-line malcontents; the rock’n’roll they spit out on their tour of grotty pubs and clubs; or their soul power ballads and Carole King-ish piano tunes.
Still, Carly Bawden as married middle-class graduate Anna, Angela Marie Hurst as Black working-class socialist firebrand Dee, and Zizi Strallen as pragmatic sometime soft-porn artiste Q sing them all so scorchingly, against a live band so thrillingly punchy, that it doesn’t matter too much. And although there is an inevitability about their journey, with its creepy label bosses and manipulative managers, superstar egos, creative clashes and druggy decline, we have a blast along the way.
Vicki Mortimer’s multi-level scaffold set is lit by Paule Constable with slashes of neon, and Kinnetia Isidore’s costumes are a riot of flares, Suzi Quatro leathers and glam-rock metallics. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s choreography sends an ensemble of denim-clad roadies whirling around the Little Ladies as they pursue their twisting path to fame. There is strong support from Samuel Barnett as Harry, their loyal gay manager, and from Tamsin Carroll as an American star-maker battling to reconcile her own ideals and ambitions, as well as a cracking cameo from Sebastien Torkia as hot property Stevie Streeter – a deranged, ringlet-haired, bare-chested hybrid of Bolan, Bowie and Alice Cooper. A tougher, more radical reworking of the material might have given the show greater traction. But if it isn’t quite a smash hit, this paean to proto-Girl Power turns the fun factor all the way up to 11.