Brian O'Reilly's 12-year-old show, newly-staged in Dublin under Noel McDonough's direction, is among the most competent and proficient Irish musicals that this reviewer has seen in this town. A modest reworking of the Faust legend, it is about the guitar-playing singing busker who may sell his creative soul to the devil of an impresario who tries to contain the creativity within a binding contract.
It obeys the rule first laid down by Oklahoma! that the songs in a stage musical should progress the story-line, and goes further by having no dialogue and minimal recitative, being simply a succession of numbers within which the whole slight story can be told.
To its credit, it remains throughout faithful to the musical genre within which it is based: the lyrics remain absolutely true to the banal cliche which is the hallmark of most pop music. And, blissfully unfaithful to the current genre of pop, almost every word of every line can be clearly heard and understood, thanks to a lively band and very well-voiced performers.
What it lacks in terms of theatre and drama is fluid continuity between the individual numbers and any real opportunity for the actors to interact with each other. It remains a series of individual numbers performed resolutely downstage facing the audience.
It is both timeless and placeless. John O'Donoghue's theatrically minimal setting has a skyline suggestive of New York above the balcony upon which the band plays. But the TV inserts suggest Dublin.
The costume design comes somewhere between Guys and Dolls and a rural Irish Palais de Dance, and the lighting by Joe Canavan owes more to a pop gig than to traditional musical theatre. Belinda Murphy's choreography lacks the sharp precision and creative energy of Broadway but, like the music and lyrics, is derivatively enjoyable as a pastiche of good Irish amateur musical theatre yearning after the leading edge of New York or the West End.
Gavin McCormack's Busker is affectingly wimpish and whingeing throughout, and Garry Montaine's impresario is effectively derived from Runyan, and lively withall. Ursula McLoughlin sings both affectingly and effectively as the busker's girlfriend, and Rebecca Smith is a bundle of musical and sexual energy.
The whole show does not add anything very new to the world of musical theatre, but in remaining faithful to its pop music roots it offers an Irish audience much entertainment.
