Writer: David Hare
Director: Daniel Raggett
Some good things, some bad things in David Hare’s old play, celebrating its 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, the bad things are the moments when the actor-musicians throw rock’n’roll shapes, and the lead singer Maggie expounds on her existential angst, which is the play’s u.s.p. The good bits are band-mates being silly, a bass player in a ball gown, games involving spouting facts without a scintilla of interest, with bonus points for boredom. And Rebecca Lucy Taylor singing a song of her own composition with sketchy but lovely self-accompaniment on her acoustic guitar.
It’s 1969, the Summer of Love is disappearing in a haze of dope smoke and acid, and a washed -up, third-rate rock band is earning a final payday at the May Ball of Jesus College Cambridge, giving the university’s jeunesse dorée a glimpse of fashionable decadence. Somewhere in the addled minds of the band members is the memory of a time when music was going to change the world, and the paralysing realisation that it didn’t, it couldn’t. Particularly gutted by this truth are the Cambridge-educated lyricist Arthur (Michael Fox) and the hard-drinking Janis Joplin lookalike Maggie (Rebecca Lucy Taylor). Maggie has drunk everything to the dregs, including cups of bitterness, and Arthur thinks great rock songs involve reams of complex lyrics. His favourite songs are taken from the repertoire of Lorenz Hart, the artist who lost out to Oscar Hammerstein when Rodgers changed partners and embraced generous box-office receipts. Arthur likes a good failure.
The play is built on the tragedy of mighty talent overwhelmed by touring debauchery and lack of recognition. The songs that the band sing are written and composed by Nick and Tony Bicât, whose credits extend to musicals and oratorios and operas. The medium in which they seem to be less experienced is rock music, and that’s a problem.
University-educated songsmiths have produced lots of good stuff. Pete Atkin took the wordy excesses of Clive James and made a really good fist of crafting songs; allusive, clever, poignant songs. There’s no reason why alumni of the Cambridge Footlights shouldn’t provide excellent musical entertainment, and a selection of tunes in the second half – jamming, parodying Queen, giving the lighting designer something to do apart from squirt white light on the audience – make for an infinitely more satisfying experience than the rock concert first half. What they seem unable to provide, however, is the energy, the power, the flash of a good rock band. They talk about it a lot. Ever such a lot. They don’t manifest it.
Perhaps the play should feature backstage shenanigans and dressing-room debauchery, and keep the would-be concert as purely noises off. Then we could pretend we’d witnessed Joplin fronting the New York Dolls, and life would be cool. Sad but cool.
Runs until 6 June 2026
