Review: Play On! at the Liverpool Playhouse ****

Shakespeare wasn’t averse to borrowing plots or characters from historic texts – and in turn his work has been the inspiration for playwrights, screenwriters, poets, artists, composers and choreographers.

Musical theatreland is no exception. From West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet) to The Boys from Syracuse (The Comedy of Errors) and Return to the Forbidden Planet (The Tempest) to The Lion King (Hamlet), the genre has co-opted the Bard’s stories in a myriad of ways.

Jazz (jukebox) musical Play On! - conceived by American TV and theatre director Sheldon Epps and written by Cheryl L West, is what Tawala Theatre Company artistic director Michael Buffong describes as ‘a riff’ on Twelfth Night, in which elements of its plot are woven around Duke Ellington numbers from the 30s and 40s.

Despite the show having been given a brief outing on Broadway in 1997, it seems it’s never become a mainstream hit. And it’s also never been seen on this side of the pond – until now that is with this exuberant and ambitious British premiere from Talawa and Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre.

I say ambitious because the production comes with a huge cast – 16 actors and a five-strong band on stage, its creation supported in a six-way co-production partnership which includes the Everyman and Playhouse where it’s playing as part of a short tour.

Set nominally in a 1940s Harlem (presumably to fit in with Ellington’s compositional timeline, although jazz purists will point out the famed Cotton Club had moved south to mid-town Manhattan by then), Play On! concerns love in all its complexions, deception, identity, and a spot of good old-fashioned misogyny.

Above: Miss Mary (Tanya Edwards) with Sweets (Lifford Shillingford) and Jester (Llewellyn Jamal). Top: Koko Alexandra's Lady Liv and ensemble. Photos by Ellie Kurttz.

Wide-eyed Viola (an effervescent Tsemaye Bob-Egbe) arrives in the big city from sleepy Mississippi, armed with a case of original compositions in the hope her uncle, the jivin’ ladies’ man ‘Jester’ (a swaggering Llewellyn Jamal) will affect an introduction to Earl Gregory’s songwriting The Duke.

After being told plainly that women don’t write songs (hints of girls don’t play guitars!), Viola reinvents herself as Vy-man and the lovelorn Duke breaks off composing mopey tunes to entreat the now be-trousered Vy to pay court to sultry, slinky but sad Harlem chanteuse Lady Liv (Koko Alexandra) on his behalf. And anyone with a working knowledge of Twelfth Night will know what happens next.

Around this central love triangle swirls a colourfully drawn cohort of other figures including the tartar-ish club manager Rev (Cameron Bernard Jones in Malvolio mode) who hides his own yearning for Lady Liv, and put-upon dresser Miss Mary (Tanya Edwards) and her long-term partner Sweets (a well toned-down Sir Toby Belch, played by Lifford Shillingford) who get their own rather sketchy sub-plot.

Above: Cameron Bernard Jones as Rev. Photo by Ellie Kurttz

While the first half tracks Shakespeare’s tale, the second half of Play On! breaks out more – although there’s still the striking sight of Jones’s gullible Rev being encouraged to get into his groove not in yellow cross-gartered stockings, but in a baggy custard-coloured zoot suit last seen on Jim Carrey in The Mask. The difference is, while Malvolio was a tragic figure of fun, Rev is actually proved to be pretty cool, and he’s rewarded with – spoiler alert – a much less desolate ending.

Buffong and his cast infuse the action with an engaging energy in what is, for the most part, a slickly performed production.

Meanwhile Ellington’s many, many numbers (there are a somewhat extravagant 24 which punctuate the plot, or perhaps the plot punctuates the songs?) are infused with spirit, feeling and some luscious harmonies as intense as the saturated red, orange and blue lighting – the ensemble’s A Train and Alexandra’s I Ain’t Got Nothing But the Blues are particular burnished delights, while upbeat tunes like Hit Me With a Hot Note and It Don’t Mean a Thing are snappily delivered.

It all takes place within the claustrophobic confines of the Harlem club whose design is dominated by an upstage stepped stage, framed within its own proscenium arches, from which the production’s five-piece live band (augmented at times with Gregory or Bob-Egbe at the piano) create some mellifluous magic.