Daddy Cool

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 look a little restrained.

Boney M’s hits include “Mary’s Boy Child” (which was originally sung by Harry Belafonte, surely), “Rivers of Babylon” and “Brown Girl in the Ring.” All three are stirringly revived at convenient plot points, rather as the Abba songs are shoe-horned into the (much better) story-line of Mamma, Mia!. But the book of Stephen Plaice and Amani Napthali just about staggers to a West Side Story-style showdown under the Paddington Westway between the rival so solid crews and then expires almost completely in the second act: the musical crew contest ends in violence, Sunny takes the wrong rap and picks up a jail sentence; he is released and the rival “mothers” kiss and make up. The music becomes stale and dreary.

That said, the show is an eyeball feast of an admittedly crude, primary-coloured kind, and the stage often leaps to life with some terrific dancing and scenic effects; as when, for instance, the company gets down big time in a 1970s disco sequence to “Baby Do You Wanna Bump,” or when a backing trio materialises magically in the recording studios of Sunny’s friend Rasputin, who tells him, “Blame it on the Rain.”

The presiding vamp, Ma Baker, is played by Michelle Collins (forever known as Cindy Beale in EastEnders) with a remarkably low wattage and her big song, “Got a Man on My Mind,” is both feebly composed and feebly delivered. Her opposite tribal number, Sunny’s Mum, Pearl, is far more effectively played and sung by Melanie La Barrie. Dwayne Wint is a likeable, dread-locked Sunny and the two main girls, Rose, his “Juliet” from the rival crew, and the club singer Asia Blue, are impressively taken by Camilla Beeeput and Javine, both products of TV pop shows but both obviously talented, with big careers in front of them.

For all my complaints, I can see that if the right audience finds its way to the Shaftesbury, the show could be a surprise hit. It certainly starts delightfully, with little Sunny setting the pace on Independence Day in Trinidad and then undermining a placid Gospel choir with his reggae enthusiasm. The musical – directed by Andy Goldberg and choreographed by Sean Cheesman – finally operates, however, on a principle of diminishing returns: the longer it goes on, the less it has to say, and the louder it says it, the less you care… except, of course, to enjoy the moves.

-Michael Coveney