Playwright Ian Salmon’s life is steeped in the music
industry and, when his friend Paul Fitzgerald turned up a photograph of the
1960s band The Liverbirds, their story was too tempting not to tell. The
resulting faithfully biographical juke-box musical Girls Don't Play Guitars tells
it succinctly and with drive and energy.
On their first appearance at Liverpool’s Cavern Club in 1963
the band were told by John Lennon that “Girls don’t play guitars” a suggestion
that made them determined to prove him wrong. After some initial scepticism,
the Cavern’s Bob Wooler was keen to promote their fledgling career. Approached
by The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein and Manfred Weissleder of Hamburg’s
legendary Star Club, The Liverbirds agreed to spend six weeks in Hamburg, with
a promise to return to Epstein later. Whether they kept that promise is for the
musical to tell.
Salmon has worked closely with director Bob Eaton, whose
work famously includes the musical Lennon, and Eaton has written some
original music for the show, including its title track ‘Girls Don’t Play
Guitars’. Other music is from the period, heavily peppered with Chuck Berry and
Bo Diddley, whose material the group frequently covered, but there are also
Liverbirds originals ‘Why Do You Hang Around Me?’, ‘It’s Got to be You’ and
‘Leave All Your Old Loves in the Past’.
Molly Grace Cutler, Alice McKenna, Sarah Workman and Lisa
Wright have been praised by the two surviving members of the band, Sylvia
Saunders and Mary McGlory, for their portrayal of them onstage. It’s not just
this central quartet that impresses musically though, with the supporting cast
pulling off slick and musically satisfying recreations of well known artists.
Occasionally this slips into caricature whilst injecting comedy into the
turbulent story, but it’s none the worse for this when it brings us something
as visually memorable as Guy Freeman’s turn as a maraca-playing Mick Jagger.
As well as appearances at The Cavern and The Star, and a
performance on German TV’s Beat Club, Salmon’s clearly structured work shows us
the steep learning curve the Liverbirds had to climb, and some of the highs and
lows of their six year journey together. As always, his writing makes us want
to invest emotionally in the characters, and his respect for getting historical
detail correct is also apparent, especially in the direct narrative that
punctuates the story.
All of this plays out on a tremendously clever set by Mark
Walters, which is enfolded in a huge guitar and surrounded by projection
screens. Here the whole stage is animated with carefully composed video design,
in which Jamie Jenkin seamlessly combines archive imagery with video of the
present performers.
Perhaps splitting the current doubling of a couple of the
central characters might help the piece along a little.
That
aside, whether it’s for the broad appeal of the musical content or the telling
of a little known piece of musical history, this show is a big crowd-pleaser
and should have legs way beyond Liverpool.
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| Girls Don't Play Guitars - picture ©Activate Digital |
Cast: Molly Grace Cutler, Alice McKenna, Sarah Workman, Lisa
Wright, Jack Alexander, Tom Connor, Tom Dunlea, Guy Freeman, Jonathan Markwood,
Mark Newnham
This review was originally written for publication by Musical Theatre Review
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