Proclaimers Take Up Jukebox Musical Baton???
Date: 30 April 2007
While
Never Forget, featuring the hits of Nineties boyband Take That, has been generating acres of newsprint in England (See
News, 14 Mar 2007), another compilation musical has been quietly getting people very excited north of Hadrian’s Wall. The Dundee Rep premiere of
Sunshine on Leith is inspired by the music of Scottish pop band the Proclaimers, aka identical twins Charlie and Craig Reid, who’ve had recent chart-topping success with the Red Nose Day comedians’ cover version of their Eighties hit “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”. Billed as a “love story about everyday life in Scotland”, the new musical follows the highs and lows of soldiers Ally and Dave as they return from battle in Afghanistan and find that families and relationships at home are not all plain sailing.
Sunshine on Leith, taking its title from the Proclaimers’ 1988 album and single of the same name, has a book by screenwriter
Stephen Greenhorn and is directed by Dundee’s artistic director
James Brining. Unlike Take That with
Never Forget (See
The Goss, 30 Mar 2007), the Proclaimers’ have given their blessing to
Sunshine on Leith - although they personally have yet to see it, as they’ve been tied up in the recording studio, working on their 20th anniversary album, which is due to be released in September. The twins burst onto the UK music scene with their first album
This Is the Story and their TV debut, performing “Letter from America” on
The Tube. Over the years their other hits, all sung in their distinctive Scottish accent, have included “I’m on My Way”, “Oh Jean”, “Sky Takes the Soul”, “Let’s Get Married”, “I’m Gonna Be” and the title song.
Sunshine on Leith continues at Dundee until 12 May 2007 and then visits Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow, although a theatre spokesperson tells Whatsonstage.com that it will “hopefully have a life” beyond those limited dates. Let’s hope so. According to a rave in the
Guardian this weekend, “not since
Willy Russell came up with
Blood Brothers has Britain produced such a perfect and perfectly unexpected marriage of music and theatre”. If that weren’t recommendation enough,
Guardian reviewer Mark Fisher assures us that
Sunshine on Leith is “a show worth walking 500 miles for, if not 500 more”.
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