Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical – West End review

It is a truth not sufficiently acknowledged that something can be not very good but also hugely enjoyable at the same time. Not in the “so bad, it’s good” way. But just that sometimes you sit and watch something, and the analytical side of your brain is saying: “Oh, that’s a bit clunky” – and yet you find yourself smiling and swaying along.

That’s exactly how I feel about Just for One Day: The Live Aid Musical, which has transferred to the West End after opening last February at the Old Vic. Now neatly marking the 40^th anniversary of the epic charity rock concert that raised millions for famine relief, it is a neat trick in jukebox musical nostalgia, framed by a bit of recent history about “the day when music brought the world together.”

As a youthful cast belts out the hits of the 1980s to an audience sporting their original Live Aid T-shirts and their still-fond memories, it casts its feelgood spell once more. Seamlessly and fluently directed by Luke Sheppard, its cleverness lies in the way that it dispenses with lookalikes, or even soundalikes, and lets the music both evoke the past and make its mark in a reorchestrated and soaring present.

So you get the operatic voice of Freddie Love carving its way through a soaring “Bohemian Rhapsody”, igniting the concert in much the same way as Freddie Mercury did in front of a worldwide audience of 1.5 billion, as the concerts beamed from Wembley and Philadelphia. You get a charismatic George Ure (no relation, oddly) following in the footsteps of Midge Ure and Ultravox and sounding out a misty “Vienna”.

Best of all you get a terrific group of singers and an epic band, stacked in silhouette behind them in Soutra Gilmour’s stripped-back and flexible setting, roaring through hits from Sting, Paul McCartney, Run DMC, David Bowie and many, many more (captions on the proscenium arch make sure you know who is who). It would take a heart of stone not to have a bit of a good time.

But then there is John O’Farrell’s book, at moments witty but dreadfully overinsistent and earnest for most of the time. The story of the concert – from Bob Geldof’s viewing of the BBC report of starving children in Ethiopia, through the Christmas Band Aid release “Feed the World” and finally to world-conquering success – is seen through the eyes of Suzanne, an ordinary woman who was inspired to be there.

Although both Melissa Jacques and Hope Kenna are amiable presences, their constant repetition of the idea that this was a moment when ordinary people felt they could make a difference pays dwindling dividends. So does the addition of Suzanne’s daughter Jemma (Fayth Ifil), who introduces millennial scepticism, questioning Geldof’s motivation and success. Her challenges are both too insistent and don’t go quite far enough in their dissection of Western intervention in the politics of African countries.

In this context, Craige Els isn’t given much more to do than swagger and swear as Geldof, though he does both well. The arrival of Tim Mahendran’s Harvey Goldsmith considerably livens things up, not least because he actually has a character and some good lines. So does Julie Atherton’s Mrs Thatcher, engaging in patter songs and side-eyed shock with Geldof. Their scenes together seem freer from the burden of history than the rest of the show.

But there are always the songs (beautifully arranged and orchestrated by Matthew Brind) and the energy (choreographed by Ebony Molina) to fall back on. They send everyone out into the night with a grin on their face. The couple behind me were even planning to come back.