Daddy Cool

Synopsis

A musical based on the hits of pop group Boney M. Daddy Cool tells the story of Sunny, a young man who lives for his music. Caught up in local rivalry between East and West London crews, he meets and falls in love with Rose, daughter of the East End's notorious club owner Ma Baker. The lovers' relationship fuels the hostility between the two gangs, leaving their families face to face with past secrets and forcing them to confront their future.

Our Review:

22 September 2006

There are about ten thousand credits in the programme for this just-a-bit-better-than-mediocre rap/reggae re-write of Romeo and Juliet but no room to mention that the best song in the show is written by Jerome Kernand Oscar Hammerstein. This must be confusing to fans of Boney M (a 1970s band fronted by a quartet of dancer/singers), whose back catalogue is advertised as the spine of the performance; even a Boney M non-fanatic like me can see that half the musical stuff is nothing to do with them at all.

“Sunny” is the song and Sunny is the hero, a Trinidadian whose domestic penury and musical career takes him as a little boy from his island in the sun to a London topography of a recording studio, a lurid lap-dancing club owned by the woman, Ma Baker, who stole his father (Daddy Cool) away from his mother, to Shadwell Arches, Camden Market and finally the Notting Hill street parade and a tacked on Caribbean carnival that makes the opening scene of The Lion King...