The Drifters Girl – Leeds Grand Theatre

Book: Ed Curtis

Director: Jonathan Church

After the tremendous triumph of theJersey Boys charting the trials and tribulations of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, why not try to replicate this theatrical success with another group from the Motown era? Idea of producer of Michael Harrison, a jukebox musical of The Drifters began life in 2021. A hit the West End starring Beverley Knight it is now on a UK tour. The Drifters Girl is the story of a group of many members and their manager, Faye Treadwell, and her fight to keep The Drifters under her control.

Throughout their entire career The Drifters recruited countless members. Some stayed for years and some, ironically, drifted through. ‘The Drifters Incorporated’ was the brand and The Treadwells (husband and wife George and Faye) were the brand managers – attracting the singers and songwriters to keep the band making money for all involved. As Faye explains, the New York Yankees are still the New York Yankees several years down the line and countless players later – why not a pop group? This is the main premise of the plot, as well as Faye’s struggle as a black woman in a male world to assert her authority especially after the early death of her husband. It is an interesting back story to music embedded into popular psyche.

Consciously cast with minimalism the group of four take up two thirds of the performers with cover Loren Anderson taking the role of Faye Treadwell in this performance and Jaydah Bell-Rickets playing The Girl – daughter of Faye and George and useful plot device to impart backstory and exposition. Indeed, the band of seven outnumber the onstage cast of six. Told often in flashback, Faye narrates the revolving door nature of the early group and the characters that passed through, most notably Ben E. King and Rudy Lewis (both played by Ashford Campbell). The plot then focusses on Faye’s battle to keep hold of the legal name of the group after facing competition from rival managers who compiled contending groups with the same name – a symptom of the former members it spat out over the years.

There is no denying that this is very much jukebox musical that is designed, produced and marketed to an audience in love with the hits they produced. Stand By Me, Saturday Night at the Movies and Save the Last Dance for Me are favourites to an audience swaying and tapping along. Reminiscence and nostalgia are excellent selling points to a theatre crowd and a medley musical of The Drifters seems long overdue in commercial theatre. The choreography is tight and the vocals excellent from the male cast who play every member of the group over the years as well as the incidental characters that the plot needs serving. It is a nice device that adds theatricality, invention and wit with the swap of a hat or a change of glasses and accent whisking us to another part of this bumpy ride throughout American pop history. Miles Anthony Daley, Ashford Campbell, Tarik Frimpong and Daniel Haswell are busy! With such tight choreography and quick scenes, they are constantly employed falling in and out of characters and song.

Special mention must be made to Anthony Ward’s excellent set. Based around the deadening foam of a recording studio, it is punctuated by neon strip and projection that punches out a hit song and shifts location in an instant. Jonathan Church’s direction, also, keeps the running time tight and focussed. There is no getting away from the fact that this is a jukebox musical shoe-horned into a loose plot as opposed to a satisfying synchronicity of serendipity. There is no shame in this and The Drifters Girl does what it probably set out to do. However, it is a shame that the story itself is a little pedestrian and, rather than something with a little more dramatic tension, is more of a march through of the group’s history and Treadwell’s legal battle interjected with all the classics.

Runs until 23rd March 2024, before continuing on tour