”Ain’t Too Proud” review – get ready, The Temptations are rollin’ into the West End

Despite, or possibly because of, the fact that they’re often money-spinning crowdpleasers, there is a considerable amount of theatrical snobbery regarding jukebox musicals. Those reservations are hard to brook though when confronted with an example of the genre as well put together as this one. Like Jersey Boys, with which it shares a director (Des McAnuff), a Broadway pedigree (it opened there in 2019 and returned briefly after the pandemic), and a sense of beautifully engineered exhilaration, Ain’t Too Proud is a deceptively straightforward bio-musical charting the development, success and setbacks of a group, in this instance global R’n’B and soul artists The Temptations.

Where Jersey Boys had four narrators and four leading roles, the storytelling in Ain’t Too Proud falls to the sole surviving member of the original Temptations line-up, Otis Williams (played with a wonderful mixture of gravitas and relatability by Sifiso Mazibuko), and a whole bunch of principal roles, reflecting the fact that over the years the group has had more than two dozen members.

Dominique Morisseau’s book is based on a published memoir by Williams and Patricia Rowmanowski, and is a considerable cut above the scripts for many other jukebox shows. There’s a keen wit at play here, often at the expense of the apparently revolving door policy for membership to the group. There is also a willingness to engage with some of the less savoury aspects of the band’s story (drug abuse, illness, volatile domestic relationships) without trivialising or sensationalising, and there’s heartfelt acknowledgement of significant political events such as the Detroit civil rights protests in the summer of 1963, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, and it talks about race with sanguine intelligence.

Morisseau’s dialogue has just the right mixture of cheese and grit, and only very occasionally feels like it’s marking time until the next beloved track. The songs, and the almost constant underscoring, feel woven into the fabric of the evening in a way that is a little more sophisticated than in most other bio-shows. That has the effect of making this feel like an authentically well-constructed musical, with integrated numbers that just happen to be some of the most memorable and transporting in the Motown catalogue, as opposed to a glorified concert with interruptions.

Those songs still have the ability to thrill the blood: “Papa Was A Rollin Stone”, “My Girl”, “Get Ready”, “Shout”, “Just My Imagination”, a soaring, poignant “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” finale…they’re all here, sounding terrific and surging joyfully through the Prince Edward Theatre, evoking memories and possibly converting new fans. The sound design (Steve Canyon Kennedy) is unusually good, allowing us to appreciate the complex, immaculately delivered harmonies, and Howard Wheeler’s sparkling but meaty orchestrations. Too often rock and pop musicals crank up the volume to levels that seem more likely to induce physical discomfort rather than enjoyment, but that’s not the case here.

McAnuff’s direction has cinematic sweep and a predominantly duo-chromatic colour palette throughout Robert Brill’s set and Peter Nigrini’s frequently dazzling projection design. The overriding visual impression is of stylish black and white stage pictures with occasional and highly effective splashes of colour provided by Howell Binkley’s lighting or Paul Tazewell’s costumes. Technically, it’s a complex show that’s always on the move but it’s so skilfully staged that it’s never unclear where the focus is.

That focus is frequently on Sergio Trujillo’s exciting, period-specific choreography, by turns aggressive then smooth, always dynamic, as performed by a cracking company who always, crucially, feel like human beings rather than slickly drilled automatons. The voices are spectacularly good throughout.