How, in ‘80s Dublin, does a 16-year old boy impress a pretty girl? Thinking fast, Conor tells her he’s starting a band and he wants her to star in the video. That’s Sing Street, the feelgood musical with shades of The Commitments and School of Rock that has just opened at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Based on a 2016 film by John Carney, it became a stage musical in 2020 and was heading for Broadway when Covid intervened and the run was cancelled. Now in London, the sketchy script by Enda Walsh is more than compensated for by the catchy sub-rock songs by John Carney and Gary Clark performed by a terrific cast of talented teenagers, most in their first stage roles.
The actors may be kids but the creative team are seasoned professionals. Director Rebecca Taichman, who won a Tony for her direction of Indecent, corrals all the actors’ excess energy into a shape that resembles a plot, centering Conor, his squabbling parents, his depressed brother and good-girl sister, into a troubled Dublin. We get to meet all of them, Conor’s schoolfriends and bandmates, his new girlfriend, the school bully, and the vicious headmaster of the Christian Brothers school they all attend, without unnecessary exposition.
Another Tony-winner, choreographer Sonya Tayeh, stages the exuberant songs with movement that matches their youthful insecurities. While performing quite complicated moves, she makes them seem to be just learning to dance, not easy. Yet another Tony- and Olivier-winner, designer Bob Crowley, provides a set with enough flexibility to keep the singing, dancing and acting uninterrupted by scenery or furniture.
This first-class creative team manage to pull off a hard trick – a highly professional show that is believably an amateur endeavour by a bunch of schoolkids.
But the joy of Sing Street for the packed audience at the Lyric is the performers themselves, led by Sheridan Townsley as Conor, in his professional debut. All these kids are potential stars, most of them new to the stage, and, instead of an offstage band, they play all the instruments themselves.
It’s noisy and fun, enough of a play to satisfy grownup audiences without sacrificing the rock concert atmosphere of the songs.
The spontaneous standing ovation at the end was deserved.
The post Ruth Leon’s Pocket Theatre Review – Sing Street at Lyric Hammersmith appeared first on Slippedisc.
