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- [01:45]
Mickey Jo
Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theat. I am a professional theatre critic here on social media and today we're going to be talking all about London's newest new musical. It opened just the other side of the weekend back on Friday of last week. It is Sing street at the Lyric Hammersmith. And if you are watching this from over the other side of the Atlantic, you may have heard of Sing street before because even though this is based on an Irish film from 2016 and it is now having its premiere in London, it has already been seen in North America. And in fact this show has a fascinating almost Broadway history because it was a Covid cancellation set to open in New York on Broadway, a transfer from off Broadway in March 2020. Obviously that was unfortunately preempted by the pandemic and the theatrical shutdown and unlike many other productions that were brought back Sing street never actually made it to Broadway. However, perhaps that is now on the horizon with this London production and despite the fact that I have not yet seen the film upon which it is based. I know, I apologize. If I was being a good little theatre critic, I would have done my homework. It's been a very busy July and I will get round it at some point. I have many, many thoughts about Sing street as a stage musical, about the very talented young cast, about the score, about these songs, about the story and about the structural curiosity within it. And there is plenty for us to talk about. But as always, for us to have a full conversation about Sing street as a musical, then I need your thoughts as well. If you have already had the chance to see this show either recently at the Lyric Hammersmith or either of the North American productions, that is the Off Broadway run or I believe a run in Boston in 2022, please let me know what you think about the show. Comments section down below. Did you have tickets to see it on Broadway that got cancelled? Let us know. In the meantime, I will be bringing you all of my thoughts about this show and if you want to hear my thoughts about other shows opening soon, both in the West End and on Broadway, make sure you're subscribed to my theatre themed YouTube channel or following me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, let's talk about Sing Street. So let's talk through the narrative of this show and it's not overly complicated. It's Based on the 2016 film of the same name, written and directed by John Carney. Set in 1980s Dublin, it's a coming of age story for our young protagonist, who is the youngest of three children of a couple living in Dublin. We are introduced to a community dealing with significant challenges as a result of unemployment and austerity and an entire generation of aspirational young people who are considering traveling to the United Kingdom, traveling across the sea, going to London even, in order to find for themselves a more affluent and promising life. Though that isn't necessarily the focus of our young protagonist Connor. When we meet him, he is more concerned with the fact that he is having to transfer to a different school because money is getting tight for his constantly arguing parents. And given that they can no longer afford his tuition fees, he has to go to a different school which is called like Singe Street. I'm probably mispronouncing this, it's S Y N G E Street, hence the pun with the title. And it's a Christian Brotherhood school, which in this particular instance means that the staff there are religious, strict, and just kind of insane. Upon arrival, he is almost immediately punished by one particularly strict teacher. And due to the nature of staging this theatrically, the only teacher who we end up meeting of his during the show because they have a black shoe policy and he is wearing brown shoes, he does his best to explain that they can't afford black shoes. But because of his circumstances and the transfer, there is this assumption that he is from a wealthy background and they sort of have preconceptions about him to begin with. And when I say they, I mean both the teacher and a couple of other students at the school. And so Connor is principally concerned with just surviving this environment, especially after he finds himself very quickly coming face to face with an aggressive bully, as well as a young woman at the school who is about a year older than him, who he encounters in a phone box who tells him that she is a model. He suggests that he has a band and can write a song for her about her. And so he then has to go about finding a band and doing just that. And that is what the plot of this show becomes. It's about him as a young person in this fraught environment. Environment, both his school life and his home life, using the joy of music and songwriting and rebellion in order to feel alive, in order to express himself, and in order to try and go after the girl that he has a crush on. It's incredibly nostalgic in that way. It's that familiar throwback joy. I say familiar. I didn't do any of these things in my childhood. I was a pretentious teenager who had just discovered Sondheim. But it's that thing of being young and finding a community of friends and creating something together, making your first band and writing songs and having that first young love. There's something just joyous and buoyant about the whole thing that allows it to float above the rest of the plot, which is otherwise quite stark and reasonably depressing. And that is one of the best things, I think, that Sing street has going for it. It's an uplifting story. It has a bit of the Billy Elliots about it as well. This one doesn't want to dance at the ballet, but what he does want to do is to make music and to go after the girl that he likes. And so he isn't really engaging fully or completely understanding complicated dynamics within his family. He doesn't know what it means for his brother to have tried to run away years ago and for now to be basically experiencing agoraphobia and be trapped inside his house and be constantly reprimanded by his father for never leaving and making something of himself because his parents caught him trying to leave years earlier and stopped him. He doesn't really understand as much as his siblings do that his parents are on the brink of getting a divorce and that his mother is potentially having an affair. And that's because at this point, although Connor legitimately has an awful lot to deal with, his world is small enough that his principal problems seem huge. And those principal problems are, what is the aesthetic of our band going to be? You know, how are we going to record our next music video? And how do I get this girl to kiss me? That's where he is at this point. And over the course of the show, he will have to reckon with many of the realities of his situation and his home life, and more of this will come to a head. But it's a satisfying story in which, funnily enough, the answers to so many of his problems can be found in music and the songs that he writes and plays with his friends and what fantastic songs they are. We'll talk momentarily about the material, but before we do, another thing I really enjoy about this show is that I think it is powerfully cross generational. I think there is something very nostalgic about it for everyone who is now a little bit older, but grew up in the 80s and remembers making a band, remembers that first crush. But I also think that the nature of this and these characters and the way that it centralizes them and Connor within the plot hopefully will endear it very much to young audiences. And that's always the greatest thing that I hope for for these shows which are focused on young protagonists and which have this sort of a riotous, dynamic and contemporary energy. I hope that young people find this show and just love it and go back and back and back. Anyway, as promised, let's carry on. Let's talk a little bit about the material. So we're going to talk about the material. We're going to talk about the book and the structure of this story. And we're also going to talk about the songs, those which have been carried over from the original film as well as those which have been added, I believe, specific for this production. Like since the previous runs which the show has had, if you've listened to the cast recording, there are a couple of differences and a couple of completely new songs as well as that. Now, in terms of who we are crediting here with the writing of all of this, John Carney Like I said, is the original writer and director of the film. He is also the co composer and co lyricist of the songs that you hear in that and in this, along with Gary Clark, who is also credited with the orchestrations and arrangements with Peter Gordino. Now, the actual adaptation of the film has been written for the stage production by Ender Walsh, whose name you may recognized from another stage adaptation of a musically inclusive, celebrated Irish film. Once. Now, the original story for the film is credited to John Carney as well as Simon Carmody. And I think the narrative itself is very strong. It's very cinematic. I imagine it plays very well on film and I would like to watch that film. But there are certain structural choices within the book that do feel a little detrimental in terms of getting to a satisfying narrative. What do I actually mean by that? Well, you have all of these different elements at play. You have the complicated home life with the arguing parents. You have his older sister and the fact that she has all this weight of expectation on her because she's the one studying at university and she is going to make something of her life. You have his brother and all of the shame attached to his situation and the complexity of his mental health. You also have everything that's going on at school with his new friends, with the entrepreneurial one who helps him set everything up, with the brilliant musical genius who's quite shy with whom he writes the songs, but who has his own very stressful home life. You also have the girl that he has a crush on, Rafina, who comes with a tragic backstory to go with her imminent departure. It's all very tense and stressful. You have the school bully, and we come to find out that there is more going on, motivating him to act in the aggressive way that he does. There is more happening there. You also have the abusive teacher. And there's every possibility that all of these elements would have worked well in the context of a film. In a musical of roughly a similar duration, we are spending more time singing. And so we don't really have the opportunity to invest as substantially as we need to in all of these characters. I also think that you can achieve slightly more on film. And it matters less if you have these characters who we never really get to know. And I think it's a shame that we don't find out really anything of detail about the other boys in the band, because those are the most satisfying and the most energizing scenes and sequences when they are filming these music videos, when they are becoming a band. And when they are expressing themselves and finding themselves and becoming a more cohesive group. But we keep cutting away from that because we have a great many of the characters and plot lines to attend to. And the one that is the most frustrating is every time we go back to his home life and his parents, there is an awful lot of time spent with his brother. And in fact, he also gets the final word. He has a big song in the Middle of the Thing in which he articulates musically his complicated, angsty feelings about the life that he could have had that he now feels is too far away. And it riffs around the ideas of freedom a lot in the lyrics. And I think he does absolutely add something of value to the narrative. I dispute whether the sister character does whatsoever. Admittedly, if you were to cut the sister, then there is one fewer female character in an already very male dominated story. But I just don't think that she adds anything. I think the material that she does have in this feels almost farcically melodramatic. There's one sequence where she likes is throwing her textbook around and saying that she doesn't want to do this anymore. She's acting out in response to disappointing news from their parents. Their parents, who are also kind of problematic because they're so thinly sketched in this as well. There is very little depth to their material. And his older brother becomes this surrogate parent figure to him. Because his parents don't have the capacity to be parents at this time. They're so busy arguing about money and have you been drinking? And they're fighting again. But we encounter them so infrequently and always in such a shallow context that they lack any kind of meaning. And the relationship between him and his brother is the most important, really the only important dynamic at play here. Because he doesn't seem to care about what his parents will say if he were to run away, if he were to get punished at school. This doesn't really register or affect him whatsoever. But he really listens to the advice of his brother. Both when it's about the bigger picture, ideas of how he's going to make his way in the world and what kind of a life he wants to lead, as well as how to get this girl to like him as well as what their group should look like. His brother is the musically interested one who gives him a little bit of guidance about what their band ought to be and how to create this group and these songs. And honestly, I think there's even an argument to be made for A version of this in which his parents are this unseen force in which we as an audience are able to feel the extent to which they aren't emotionally present in his life whatsoever due to their absence on stage. If these were characters who were talked about or represented in some other way, but we only see his proximal relationship with his brother, I actually think that could be more effective rather than having them walk on every few scenes just to argue with each other in the same way that they did a few scenes before and not look him in the eye. And yet, for all the time that we spend with Brendan, I feel like there are still unanswered emotional questions. And the way in which the show actually concluded left me more than a little bit puzzled. Let me tell you about why this is obviously going to come with a spoiler war. So as we're heading through the second act, everything is beginning to go wrong. And the band have been arguing and they have been caught and punished by the abusive teacher for filming without permission on school property, for creating one of their music videos. And once they regroup, they make the decision to surprise him on stage with a rebellious performance of a fantastic song in which they sing about his hypocrisy, which is a really fantastic moment. It's probably the most satisfying of the entire show, right next to the filming of all of their music videos. And it's up there with, like, nobody puts Baby in a corner in terms of how satisfying it is. You have them storming the stage, they're wearing masks with his face on, and it's this punk, rebellious song. I do wish, as a random note that the melody of the chorus was echoed by other members of the band, which is something that they do occasionally in terms of the vocal arrangements, just because it sits a little bit lower. And so it doesn't have as much emphasis as some of the other melodies that they sing. But it's such a fantastic moment. The hand gets overplayed a little bit here, though, because they then do two more songs. And at this point we are situated as the audience to be. Because it's some sort of end of term presentation celebration, whatever it may be. And they've crashed this ceremony and we are the actual audience in this context. And the teacher has been lured off stage and we're cheering for it and it's euphoric and we're clapping along to these outstanding songs. But they do, at this point, three songs. And I can forgive a set of that length of just diegetic material, which means within the context of the musical. They are actually, you know, playing and singing songs. If this were basically the end of the show, if this would tantamount to a curtain call. And this was just the downhill of like, we're now just going to enjoy this band for a few songs. But it's puzzling because there's then a whole ending that happens after that. And when he sings the third song, it is for Rafina. And it's this.
- [16:45]
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Mickey Jo
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- [17:25]
Mickey Jo
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- [17:36]
Mickey Jo
Emotional revelation. And he thinks that she's already left, but in fact she had come back. And she then walks on stage. And they have objectively what is a very private conversation which no longer works in the dramatic context of us being the actual audience. And there's still a microphone on stage that he's speaking into, and she's telling him very personal details that presumably they wouldn't want to air in front of everyone, just attentively listening. And thereafter, we have another 10 or 15 minutes, which I'll tell you about in just a moment. But the most obvious way in which to do this in a traditional musical structure is for it to just be the two songs. They come on, they do the rebellious song, and then he says, thank you so much. We are Sing Street. Here is another song I want to sing for a girl that I knew, he says, for a model that I knew once, and then that all plays out and that's fine. It's the third song in the middle that I think just prolongs the whole thing too much. And that song is a great song. Its lyrics are like all the complicated boys, boys, boys, boys and the complicated girls, girls, girls, girls. And there's so many other places you could put that specifically in the first act of this show. It'd be a great way of underscoring his confusion about how to navigate the blossoming relationship with this young girl. But eventually, spoiler warnings continue. They decide to go together to England. I think the whole band is going to England, but certainly these two are going together as a couple. And he goes and tells his brother because they need a lift to the boat. And it is a big deal for the brother to even leave the house in order to drive them there. That is a big milestone for him. It's something that he hasn't done in years. Earlier in the show, he had been invited by Connor, his younger brother, to go and play with them, to take his guitar, something that he would have loved as a younger man. But he fails in his attempt to get out of the house. And we see this represented by a corridor of light that he is not able to walk down. He has a sort of emotional panic attack in response. And what's a little frustrating about the way that this is staged at the end of the show is it's not represented in the same way. Him actually leaving the house is still seen as a challenge, but one that he overcomes while he is putting on his shoes. That becomes the big hurdle. And then it's just like zip. And suddenly we're there. And then he's still struggling with something when they get to the sea. But he eventually waves away his brother and then he. Brendan, the older brother, sings an extended many minute song about freedom and moving on with his life. And I think all this moment really needed to be is for the two of them, the two younger characters, to be walking up to the back of the stage. We see the sea in the background. They're turning into silhouettes, Sophie and sky and Mamma Mia Style. And he is at the front of the stage looking out over the auditorium. But we understand that he's watching them. We just. We know what that means. And a smile grows across his face. And he punches the air and he punches the air in the show. That's something that happens here. But then he sings a three minute song afterwards and it's just weird for him to have the final say. And I dare say this is something that has been carried over from the film. And because he's a little older, he has more of an emotional capacity to talk about the whole thing, but it just frames the whole story as being about him. And on a slightly more somber note, I understand the depth that they are trying to convey here. I understand the story that they are trying to tell about, you know, his young brother is going and making something of his life and he is so proud and he feels conflicted. But ultimately he is happy that he's going to do it and he's going to take that chance and that he is going to try. I just think the fact that the character who we have come to understand is our protagonist has been off stage for five minutes before the curtain call is a little unusual. Now, having talked about that, let's finally talk about these songs and everything else that I loved about this show. So here is the thing. I do think that there is a dissatisfying and sort of minimally nuanced quality to this narrative. But every damn time that they are singing these songs, that they are playing their instruments, that they are filming one of their music videos, you forget about it because you are having such a great time. It is so nostalgic. We are transported to that anarchy of youth. And like I said, the songs are really great. And the way that those songs are staged is also really great. The whole show has been directed by Rebecca Teichman and that's the same for every previous production as well. The choreography is by Sonya Tyre and it's not a huge explosion of like traditional dance choreography as we have seen in some of Sonja's previous work. But there are really fantastic punk moments when they are doing these music videos and you have someone with a camera moving around the different band members creating the music video as they are performing the song. And we see that relayed to a screen at the back of the stage. And I know we keep talking about cameras and screens on stage. This is maybe the best way, I like to see it realized when you can watch everything else that's happening on stage if you wish to. But we also see how it's being captured through the camera's lens and how they are playing to the camera. It's so good. It is so retro, whatever filter they have over it to give it that retro, lower quality film look. But also what little choreography they're able to do while they are holding instruments. And they do this like forwards and back kicking thing a couple of times. That's really brilliant. And there are a couple of songs which are performed in this kind of context. The Riddle of the Model is one of the first, and it's very charming to see them emulating things of other bands from those eras and emulating that kind of sound and emulating the aesthetic as they continue to evolve and change the way that they look and the way that they present themselves and the kind of energy that they have in these videos and performing these songs up is far and away the best song in the score. It is such a fantastic song. This could be a breakaway pop hit legitimately. It's a really great song. The lift into the higher vocal register going into the chorus, coming out of this brilliantly written verse. All of the lyrics, it's just poetry, but it's youthful poetry. It's so romantic and it just soars. You get the sensation that you're just like gliding over a field on a spring day. And when they started playing this song fairly early in the first act, which is not what I was expecting to hear this song because I knew that this was going to be the best song in the show, I was familiar with it already. I started to get a little bit nervous. And when they did it as a. We're writing the song in real time. How about this? How about this? Oh, what if we use this melody and it was just the two of them at a piano writing it together. And that was the beginning of the song. I was once again a little bit nervous. And then as we have these melodic lines, the way that they staged it with it all slowly coming together with the other band members with their instruments standing up.
- [24:06]
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- [24:40]
Mickey Jo
In unison at the side of the stage and taking their arms and moving them into position. It was so simply and beautifully staged. There was this very profound quality to it. It was lit beautifully. And the one thing that I love more than a full throttle musical number is one that steadily comes together and builds into something exceptional. And the way that this music works in this song, it absolutely demands something like that. And it's. It's just so much smarter than whatever I was expecting this song to be. It was absolutely perfect. Now there's more interesting musical staging, some of it involving a telephone box. The telephone box that Rufina is so often in because she's waiting for a call from her older and jealous boyfriend. And so she's connected to the telephone box. Literally. It represents him, that character who we never see, who we never encounter, but the presence of whom we feel the entire time because he is this person, big obstacle in the way of this potential young love. And the telephone box is on casters and it can spin around in itself. And there's some great moments when she is spinning around in it and she's spinning around on the edge of it. There are a couple of new songs, like I mentioned, written for this production, and I believe they are principally for Rufina and for Brendan, because the majority of the other songs are possibly a new opening number as well. But the majority of the other songs are all diegetic. They're all songs actually performed by the band, whereas these are musicalized internal monologues to just expand those characters a little bit. Bit. But all of the score I really enjoy, for it to have been completed so many years apart, it still feels cohesive and it feels very much like a love letter to the 80s. You have a lot of, like, Duran Duran kind of nods in there. A lot of her music that Rafina sings sounds a little Kate Bush in terms of its emotional, wistful, slightly sorrowful quality. And I will tell you at this point, in case I forget to mention it later, that every time you are seeing an instrument played on stage, that instrument is being played there on stage, live by these performers. And some of the band members actually have more of a background as musicians than they do as musical theater actors, which I thought was very interesting. Now, there are a couple more creatives I want to highlight here, and I didn't even know until I just read it that this was a Natasha Katz lighting design. And of course it was, because she always does fantastic work. I loved this lighting design. There was a horizontal line about halfway up the playing space that aligned with where the horizon was projected. There was quite a lot projected onto this back wall. Very well done, very satisfyingly. And there was just a sort of an upwards glow from a strip of lights on that halfway point, cutting through horizontally. That was used brilliantly on many occasions. Let me tell you about these projections, specifically, because they were also gorgeous. Who did projections? Who did projections? Luke Hall's video design. Excellent work. Really great. Finally, then, let me tell you about the standout performances. So Sheridan Townsley is the young actor playing Connor. What a star. What a fantastic breakthrough performance happening here on stage at the Lyric Hammersmith. Not only a really brilliant and convincing frontman of this group that feels legitimately great enough to go and tour and gig. I mean, they could play Glastonbury. I know very little about Glastonbury, but I would buy a ticket. I mean, maybe if I'm free, but it also feels pitched correctly in terms of the age that he is playing and his youthful perspective on love and the future and his family situation and the really difficult material that he has to do in terms of the bullying scenes, in terms of the physical abuse that he withstands from the abusive teacher at his school, and his adoration of Rafina and his naivete as he's trying to understand more about her life and her history and her situation. But he's just a very compelling performer on stage. I do think that in the way that he's written, there could be a little more frustration and a little more angst spilling into other moments of his life, because he mostly just lets it wash off his back pretty much, and is motivated largely just by the young love that he is experiencing. But he's got such an expressive face and in the voice as well, the grit and the resentment that he is singing with and that brilliant vocal tone. It's all very good. Grace Colander played Rafina. I had mixed feelings about the wig line, but I loved her voice and I loved her performance and I loved the complexity of it all and the depth, while still characterizing it in a way that feels natural to a young character, but one who has been forced because of circumstance to grow older than her years. She sounds absolutely fantastic. Her vocal tone feels so of the era. It sounds so Kate Bush. It sounds so much like classic records. And another one, a very mesmerizing, captivating stage presence, I will say. And I don't even think I particularly have an ear for it, so this may bother other people significantly more. The Irish accent were mixed to dubious from a handful of players. Some people did them very well. I don't know who is Irish and who isn't within this company. It is not everyone, and that was evident. Some of them were very good. Lloyd Hutchinson's was very good. He was playing Brother Baxter, who is the abusive teacher. There's something about the way that his character is portrayed and the relationship that we have to him as an audience that isn't yet tonally configured in the way that it should be. I don't think there was a quality of humor to a lot of his early scenes. And he's a laughably obnoxious and hypocritical character. But he has ultimately a very sinister impact. And I don't know if that feels foreshadowed enough when we first meet him or if we just think that he is going to be strict. And it's interesting because when we meet the school bully, we know Instantly that he's going to be a bully, that he is going to be violent. And I think we need a little more sense of that from Brother Baxter as well. I think we need to know that he is, is a controlling bully of a different kind and that he is abusing the power that he has over the young boys at the school. That being said, we did really come to resent him, which is the sign of a villain played very well. Adam Hunter played Brendan. I've shared my many thoughts about his material, but it was all performed and executed very, very well, very emotionally, powerfully. A tremendous amount of pathos in his performance. Many, many other talented performers in the cast, brilliant musicians and singers and actors. But one of my stand up performances for the entire show, maybe my favorite person on that stage was Jack. James Ryan, who plays Barry, you may be thinking Mickey Jo, who was Barry. Barry is the bully character whose motivations for being a school bully we learn a little bit more about as we head towards the end of the second act and so does Connor. And this was an utterly three dimensional performance. Wholeheartedly committed, so brilliantly physically realized with this strikingly dangerous quality, with this real edge and mania to it, but that metamorphosized into something recognizably wounded and damaged and human. And his is, I think of the show really the emotional B plot. They're trying to make Brendan the older brother. The emotional B plot. And I just don't think it is. I think think Barry's is connecting more as far as I'm concerned, at least it's connecting far more as the emotional undercurrent of what's happening here. While we enjoy the triumph of this band coming together and finding themselves and singing their songs and getting the girl and standing up to authority and it's through all of that that Sing street becomes a hell of a lot of fun. I think this musical could go a long way. I think for that to happen there's elements of the narrative that ought to be reworked. I don't think there's anything wrong in allowing it to take a couple of steps, steps further away from the film. I think there is something so satisfying here like a Billy Elliot, a really recognizable and familiar uplifting feel good coming of age story and plot. And I think it's so close to being carved out from the rock face. We just need to keep chipping away at it. And it has the capacity to go on to become a huge feel good hit. The kind that could eventually make its way back to Broadway where it was about to open but never got the chance. Chance and God knows these songs are going to help it get there. The music is so so good. Cast are brilliant. Go and check it out. Lyrichammersmith I will be back. I absolutely need to go and see this again during its short run there this summer. Tickets are not expensive at the Lyrichammersmith. Go and check out this brilliant piece of theatre if you haven't already. And if you have already, let me know what you thought of it in the comments section down below. I would love to know other people's opinions on Sing street and if you enjoyed listening to mine, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel or follow me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.
- [33:27]
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Indeed Advertiser
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