What's It All About? Bacharach Reimagined (Menier Chocolate Factory)

The five-star moment was at the end of opening night when Burt Bacharach, 87 year-old pop song writer genius, sidled modestly onto the stage, sat down at the piano and joined the ukulele-strumming cast in "Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head."

Even without Burt, the show’s four-star plus the way it makes so many familiar songs sound fresh as paint, even overlaying them on each other, playing them at unexpected tempi with novel syncopations, then finding the soul in the most deceptively bubble-gum of melodies, the most formulaic of heartbreak hotel lyrics.

For anyone who had a heart, the look of love is always there to remind me, so I just don’t know what to do with myself, wishin’ and hopin’ while you walk on by and make it easy on yourself… Bacharach and his regular lyricist, the late Hal David, spun poetry from the emotionally prosaic and set the romantic mood of a nation to the vocal vibrations of Perry Como, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Sacha Distel, Cilla Black, Roberta Flack, Gene Pitney…

But none of this show’s versions sound like covers. In ex-Frantic Assembly choreographer Steven Hoggett‘s production they sound brand new, re-rhythmed, chopped up, spread around, and then subjected to the full rock band treatment by a brilliant seven-strong cast led by lead singer and guitarist Kyle Riabko, with terrific percussion from James Williams, keyboards by Renato Paris, and interestingly contrasted pop/soul singing from Stephanie McKeon and Anastacia McCleskey.

The show ran off-Broadway for a few months last year. Does it have West End potential? It’s not a musical. It doesn’t even try to be, unlike the other outstanding new back-catalogue shows in town, Carole King’s Beautiful and the Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon. There’s a design, both atmospheric and neutral, of standard lamps, sofas (cushions and blankets draped around the auditorium), a dart board (no idea why), mics and piled-up guitars. It’s just a music room, a domesticated lab for musicians of the highest order.

Bacharach and David did write one Broadway and West End musical hit – Promises, Promises (1968), book by Neil Simon, based on the movie The Apartment – and that show’s best stand-alone song, "I’ll Never Fall in Love Again" features prominently here, as do such iconic movie items as "Alfie", "The Look of Love" (Casino Royale), and "What’s New Pussycat?" ("Whoa, whoa-yeh" as my first night friend reminded me, audibly).

So this is superior supper club fare, really; but it is supremely theatrical, musically enthralling and the best sort of tribute show to a legend in his own lifetime, the inimitable Burt Bacharach, master magician of Motown, lyrical pop and beautiful ballad. "Close to you" ("Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near?") doesn’t even begin to express it.

What's it all About? Bacharach Reimagined is running at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 5 September. For more information and to book tickets, click here.