Summer Holiday musical at the Crucible Theatre – review

Presenting Summer Holiday on stage brings with it all sorts of problems, apart from one that the Crucible could do nothing about: singing “We’re going where the sun shines brightly” to an audience gasping in the current heatwave!

The essential problem is what to do about period. The original film (released in 1963) falls within the lifetime of many of the audience, but the world has changed so much. Apart from the sheer wholesomeness of the characters, racing around like kids and falling instantly in love with the first girl they see, there is their naivety about Europe. “Let’s see if it’s true”, they sing. Now, a recent survey finds that 29 per cent of schoolchildren have visited more countries than they have English counties.

And this brings up the question of what to do about the comical foreigners. Adaptors Michael Gyngell and Mark Haddigan have got rid of most of them (and also spared us Ron Moody’s mime artist), but the feeling remains that all foreigners (and this includes Americans of a certain age) are funny. Then there is the question of representing the full sexual spectrum, which is done in a fairly perfunctory way: instead of picking up an all-girls group, the lads come across a threesome of two girls and a boy who immediately pairs off with one of the lads from the bus garage. We are left in a sort of half-1963, half-2026 state.

The original was a vehicle for the young Cliff Richard as Don, and you wonder if Peter Myers and Ronald Cass’s screenplay is strong enough without a guaranteed box office star at its centre. It traces an impossibly madcap journey with plenty of songs through Europe, with Don and his mates from the bus garage, collecting the Do-Re-Mi singing group on the way and then discovering a boy stowed away on the bus. The “boy” proves to be Barbara, an American singer backed by her pushy mother, who then instigates a totally incompetent chase. They arrive in Athens, where Do-Re-Mi has an engagement, Don and Barbara marry, and everybody’s happy because Don gets a contract for a summer bus service to Athens.

The twist the directors Elizabeth Newman and Ben Occipinti give to all this is to populate the stage with actor-musicians and, whatever my reservations elsewhere, this works perfectly. On a platform atop the main structure of Amanda Stoodley’s functional design are keyboards and drums – a special word for Isaac Savage, immaculate on the accordion and keyboards – but nearly all the cast have guitars at the ready (plus various wind instruments) and are more than adept both at playing them and at swinging into a dance with instrument on their backs. The musical links are handled really well, especially the various Shadows routines.

It’s an immensely good-humoured and infectious show, with the audience joining in on the final “Do You Wanna Dance” so far as space allows, and crams in many other Cliff Richard favourites, stealing “The Young Ones” from his earlier film. All the cast perform energetically, but somehow the wisecracks are never sharp enough to cover up the nonsensical plot. This is made more so by Jane McCarry’s scenery-chewing performance as Barbara’s mother. Damian Humbley, as her companion, manages to put us in mind of Lionel Murton in the film and the two have great fun as Spanish dancers on “La La La”, but their scenes overall are a bit much.

The young cast all work hard and dance and sing pleasantly, with Jim Duah (Edwin) doing rather more than that on “Move It”. George Jones (Don) makes no attempt to “do a Cliff Richard” and gives a very personable performance, but the stand-out turn is by Fanta Barrie, from glamorous singer to urchin boy to Don’s ever-graceful bride.

The bus (South Yorkshire, of course, in this version) takes many forms, from movable seats to a mechanical model, but I couldn’t help wondering whether the best thing is a real bus, as I encountered some years ago in Bolton, in a production (oddly enough, by Newman and Occipinti) that started in the bus station, took us on a drive round, picking up Do-Re-Mi, then ended at the theatre for the second half.