ajhlovestheatre

GET DOWN TONIGHT – The KC and the Sunshine Band Musical

book by J F Lawton 

music and lyrics by Harry Wayne Casey

inspired by a true story by Harry Wayne Casey

directed by Lisa Stevens 

Charing Cross Theatre, London – until 15 November 2025

running time: 80 minutes no interval 

https://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/get-down-tonight

It’s not often in the theatre that you find yourself wishing the show you were watching was a bit longer, but that’s the case with Get Down Tonight, the compact, amiable new tuner inspired by the hits and story of KC and the Sunshine Band (‘Give it Up’, ‘Rock Your Baby’, ‘Please Don’t Go’, ‘Boogie Shoes’, ‘Shake Your Booty’). It’s not that Harry Wayne Casey (KC) and J F Lawton’s musical is particularly outstanding (it’s perfectly entertaining but unlikely to keep awake at night the creatives behind & Juliet, Our House or Jersey Boys – arguably the strongest examples of the jukebox genre) but eighty minutes just isn’t enough time to cram in nearly thirty numbers as well as KC’s rise to fame, the sociopolitical changes of the 1960s and ‘70s, a meta-theatrical framing device, and the birth of disco.

J F Lawton’s script playfully imagines Harry/ KC (a sweetly charismatic Ross Harmon) and his best friend Dee (Paige Fenlon, excellent) directly referencing the fact that they’re in a show and pondering what makes a musical. It’s quite fun at first but gets a bit wearing, or at least it would if the cast weren’t so likeable and talented. Their individual personalities and bravura ways with a song go an impressive distance towards elevating a too-brief script.

Harry goes from working in a record shop and hanging out with his hippie mates to creating globally acclaimed club classics apparently in the blink of an eye, and the storytelling is so perfunctory that important milestones in his life, such as the loss of his first gay lover to AIDS or the untimely death of another close friend, are skated through with a speed that starts to look like callousness. Some of the transitions from dialogue to song are so cheesy that they make Mamma Mia! and We Will Rock You look like Sondheim-esque masterpieces of integration by comparison.

Musically though, the show is immaculate. The band is tight and dynamic, and all the voices are terrific. Alongside his musical theatre career, Harmon is a recording artist in his own right, and it shows. He’s warmly magnetic with a sky-scraping high belt and authentic star quality, making the transition from boyish gaucheness to pop star entirely credible. Although the role is barely fleshed out, Adam Taylor simmers and sparkles as Orly, the first man he falls in love with, and is a glorious singer and dancer.

Fenlon, and the stupendously voiced Annabelle Terry as a young woman nursing an unrequited love for Harry, have even less to work with than Taylor in terms of their characters, but perform with tremendous zeal and energy, and sell their songs for all they’re worth. So does the hardworking ensemble of four who multi-role, belt, and deliver Lisa Stevens’ enjoyable, hip-swivelling choreography with infectious enthusiasm.

Stevens’ direction is more efficient than inspired (why does a character who claims to be Mancunian sound like a Londoner…is this Frasier?!) but at least manages to deflect attention from how tiny the stage of Charing Cross is for a musical. Bretta Gerecke’s set is a riot of disco balls flashily lit by Jai Morjaria, and the sound design by Chris Whybrow nicely balances clarity with disco joy. 

With only scant lines of dialogue as connecting tissue and characterisations that, despite the considerable charm of the cast, are at best sketchy, Harry/KC’s songs are left to do a lot of heavy lifting here, and that’s not always enough. I defy anybody to hear the cheeky, boppy uplift of a track like ‘Give It Up’ (bravely, or recklessly, hurled in here within the first ten minutes) and not find a smile on their face, but, well crafted and catchy as they are, Casey’s creations get a bit samey when listened to en masse. There’s nothing inherently theatrical about them: the original stage version of Saturday Night Fever used new arrangements that gave a dramatic bombast to the Bee Gees back catalogue, but that hasn’t happened here where Mark Crossland’s orchestrations, while fresh and appealing, sound more like something from a recording studio. Eighty minutes of disco become a bit relentless when there’s not much script in between the songs….unless you’re on the dancefloor.

Fun and fleet, and packed with earworms, Get Down Tonight would, in all honesty, probably be pretty forgettable without this superb cast. It’s so short it would work best as part of a bigger night out in the West End, and it’s undeniably exhilarating to experience some of these smashing songs live on stage, just don’t expect much drama.