Caroline: A New Musical at New Wolsey Theatre and on tour – review

Back in the mists of time the only way teens could hear new pop music was to illicitly tune their radios into Caroline, a new station, broadcasting from a rustbucket radio ship, anchored off the Essex coast where a band of young, maverick DJs, including Tony Blackburn and Simon Dee played the latest discs.

Without Caroline there wouldn’t have been Radio One, or the tidal wave of pop which swept through the British music scene in its wake. Radio Caroline began in March 1964 and the station’s precarious existence, bobbing about in international waters and trying to evade the law, is the stuff of legend.

Now acclaimed writer Vikki Stone has created a rollicking, fun-filled, foot-pumping show, Caroline: A New Musical, which opened last night at The New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, and what a chart-topping smash hit it is.

Caroline is a 45rpm love story played out amid those heady, halcyon days on the high seas when the pirates of the platters ruled the air waves.

It brought it all back for me thanks to a terrific playlist of ‘60s hits, performed by a multi-talented cast of actor-singers, and a B-side of a heartwarming story of love and ambition to warm your cockles.

Jake Halsey-Jones and Claire Lee Shenfield are outstanding as teenage sweethearts Robbie and Caroline, who are struggling to get by. Cheeky chappie Robbie is unemployed and heading nowhere until he spots a job advert for disc jockeys at a new radio station.

After initially failing to impress its boss, Declan, he throws off the airs and graces of a BBC announcer and convinces with his banter and winning personality. For the next three years we follow his success and his rocky relationship with the girl he loves, played out to the radio station’s struggles to remain afloat.

This is a winning and self-assured production from director Douglas Rintoul and co-director Alex Thorpe, with Halsey-Jones and Shenfield leading a standout and flawless cast who slickly swap roles as well as displaying impressive musical diversity.

Gareth Cooper is deliciously evil in his “Captain Hook” role of the token bad guy, the Government’s postmaster general, who sets out to sink Caroline. Joey Hickman looks every inch the smooth-talking and ambitious entrepreneur, Declan, while Eloise Richardson excels as teenage Caroline’s best friend, Mary. Perry Meadowcroft knocks it out of the park with his rockin’ vocals.

Radio Caroline was the country’s first commercial radio station and it spent three years navigating chopping waters, and a tsunami of government protests, before being (temporarily) scuppered.

Success for Caroline: A New Musical‘s maiden voyage around regional theatres, backed by the East Anglian Touring Consortium, is assured – but I’d bet it also has the sealegs to sail into a West End berth.