Knight’s singing is a big hit — but this is a very odd show

The Drifters Girl Garrick Theatre, WC2H ★★✩✩✩

SOUL diva Beverley Knight and four male co-stars deliver barnstorming versions of a host of Drifters hits, from Money Honey to Under the Boardwalk, in this high-energy, admirably compact, but distinctly odd show. Like Tina and Jersey Boys, it’s a mixture of eulogistic biography and jukebox musical, but the life celebrated here isn’t the artists’ but their manager’s.

Faye Treadwell (Knight) was a hardnosed, pioneering black businesswoman in the institutionally racist, sexist Fifties American music industry, who created a barrier-shattering brand, not a band. The Drifters lasted 60 years but got through 60 members; Treadwell likening them to the New York Yankees. Breakaways like Ben E King were sued if they tried to trade on past association.

An extraordinary woman, clearly. But it’s odd to have a musical celebrating the disposability of creatives. Particularly as, here, a quartet of male musical theatre stalwarts belt out note-perfect versions of wonderful songs, play several Drifters each, and all the other parts, from Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun to Bruce Forsyth. Inevitably, this leads to some cartoonish characterisation, especially when they’re playing women.

There’s a constant conflict between the adroit and the clumsy in Jonathan Church’s production. The staging is pleasingly simple, with a kaleidoscopic set of neon tubes, textured walls and video screens from Anthony Ward and well-drilled doo-wop dances from Karen Bruce. But oh dear, Ed Curtis’s script is awful, full of exposition and bathos.

The framing concept is that Faye is telling the Drifters’ story to her daughter, explaining the business battles, lawsuits, the early death of gay lead singer Rudy Lewis, and her own shortcomings as a mother. Weirdly, the songs slot more neatly into this thumpingly obvious arc of adversity, regret and eventual triumph than in most compilation musicals.

It all comes back to the music. As an actor, Knight is passably angry and anguished as Faye, but when she transitions into full-throated song, time seems to stop. The four Drifters deliver immaculate performances of Sweets for My Sweet, Stand By Me and the furious Rat Race, unselfishly swapping the spotlight and the vocal pyrotechnics. Treadwell’s story is worth telling: but maybe it was all about the unsung artists after all.

• Until March 26; nimaxtheatres.com