ajhlovestheatre

REHAB The Musical

Music and Lyrics by Grant Black and Murray Lachlan Young

Book by Elliot Davis

Directed by Gary Lloyd

Neon 194, London – until 17 February 2024

https://rehabthemusical.com

“Waaaaaanker! You’re a wanker!” Who doesn’t love a good ole musical theatre singalong?! Not sure that this particular ditty will be popping up much at the Theatre Café or Marie’s Crisis, mind. It’s one of the standout numbers from a new British tuner entitled Rehab The Musical, currently and inexplicably enjoying a second London run having premiered in 2022 at the Playground Theatre in Notting Hill and now deafening unsuspecting patrons in a basement near Piccadilly Circus.

Actually I say “inexplicably” but a quick glance at the credits reveals that the music and lyrics are co-written by Grant Black, the main producer is Clive Black, and they are both sons of another of the shows producers, lyricist Don Black CBE, whose work includes Tell Me On A Sunday, Sunset Boulevard, several James Bond themes, and words for everyone from Michael Jackson and Meat Loaf to Lulu. Without such a showbiz heavy hitter involved, it’s hard to believe this well meaning but strange bit of nonsense would have made it past the first reading let alone to a production featuring some of the West End’s finest.

In all fairness, musically this rock-pop-soul score is often nicely crafted and moderately memorable. The lyrics however are quite another matter, coming from the anything-for-a-rhyme school of writing that just about suffices in the jolly uptempo numbers (although the ‘Wanker’ number is pushing it a bit) but run the risk of provoking laughter in all the wrong places when they seek to be heartfelt or serious. Incredibly, they are partly the work of Murray Lachlan Young, which goes to prove, I guess, that providing the words for musical theatre songs and writing poetry are two very discrete skills.

Collectors of theatrical curios, and masochists of a certain age who harbour “fond” memories of such West End musical disasters of yore as Which Witch, Out Of The Blue (the Nagasaki musical…yes really), The Fields of Ambrosia (“where everybody knows ya!”) and Murderous Instincts (‘nuff said), might want to check this out. So too should anybody who fancies seeing a selection of terrifically talented performers, with enough collective credits to choke a proverbial cart horse, grappling with some pretty diabolical material. That most of them emerge with dignity intact says more about their professionalism than about the show they’re in, which is an example of the so-bad-it’s-almost-good inept British musical that I thought we’d left behind in the early 1990s. But apparently not…

This amateurishly staged, poorly lit farrago, long on swearing (the line “off you fuck” had the glossy first night crowd wetting their uncomfortable seats with mirth) but short on real wit and human interest, trivialises addiction, recovery, eating disorders and almost everything else it touches upon. An overdose is used as a cheap plot device to ignite a thunderous affirmation-burning anthem vaguely reminiscent of the end of the first act of Hair, only not so effective, while a crass cross-dressing number makes one ponder whether La Cage Aux Folles had just been a beautiful mirage. There’s a song about cheese that I think is supposed to be funny but mainly made me feel lactose intolerant.

The show tells, in crude, bold, primary colours, the 1990s-set story of one Kid Pop, real name Neil (a glowering, posturing Christian Maynard who at least looks like a star), his stint in rehab and the efforts of his sleazy crook of a manager (Keith Allen, apparently having a whale of a time) to derail his efforts at sobriety in order to keep him in the tabloids. There’s a bit of a love story, although neither Maynard’s Kid, or Neil or whatever, nor Maiya Quansah-Breed’s glamorous stripper seem that into it, warbling about being two broken people with all the passion and heartbreak of a pair of gym buddies arguing about whose turn it is to put the weights back.

There’s also a plot twist which I admit I did not see coming but which I was grateful for, partly because it meant we would all shortly be able to go home, and partly because it explained why one of British musical theatre’s more reliable talents had been giving, up to that point, such a bizarrely detached performance. There’s also redemption at the end…you can tell it’s redemption because they all come on dressed in white.

Gary Lloyd’s in-ya-face production initially recalls Christopher Renshaw’s work on the original production of Taboo at what is now the Leicester Square Theatre, with the cast emerging from all corners of the unconventional playing space and at close proximity to the audience. But where that show about a pop star (Boy George) going off the rails before getting a second chance had poignancy and a huge heart, this one only has a load of shouting and bawling, and a bunch of unsympathetic characters it’s hard to care about. Also, Mark Davies Markham’s writing for the book scenes in Taboo had a tang of emotional authenticity, whereas the script here (by Elliot Davis) is mostly like an old fashioned schools and colleges TV programme about addiction, with extra swearing.

Rebecca Thornhill and John Barr are fundamentally incapable of giving bad performances, and invest their roles -respectively, an alcoholic former Bond girl and a tanning addict called, I kid you not, Barry Bronze- with a lot more feeling and skill than the writing warrants. Oscar Conlon-Morrey is excellent, and in fabulous voice, as probably the only sympathetic character in the entire cast, and Jodie Steele looks stunning but is mostly wasted (in the non-inebriated sense) as Keith Allen’s nasty P.A. sidekick. Mica Paris MBE brings big hair and a big voice but little in the way of acting to the underwritten role of a group leader in the rehab clinic. Most of the singing is quite wonderful, and the dancing is a lot better than the actual choreography.

If I’m harsher than usual on this sour yet insipid show, it’s because there is so much good musical theatre that goes unproduced or doesn’t get beyond the developmental stage, and this one has had considerable talent, resources and money lavished upon it, and it’s still excruciating. There’s a lively second act night club number, vaguely reminiscent of the rollicking ‘Shameless’ from the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer To Heaven, which repeatedly rhymes “cocaine” with “again”, and I couldn’t help but think that Rehab as a whole brought to mind, for me anyway, one of PSB’s most popular hits from the ‘90s…namely, ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’