The author of this new work Let the Sun Shine Helen Redcliffe is also head of producing at Storyhouse, who present the annual theatre festival in Chester’s Grosvenor Park, now in its 16th year. She is therefore very aware of the need for bold, engaging storytelling to compete with the seagulls, squirrels and occasional passing helicopters that provide the background ambiance in this space.
Music features heavily in almost all the productions here, with a cast of multi-instrumentalist actors working in repertory in multiple plays through the summer, but this hugely entertaining tale is a 1960s themed jukebox show that is absolutely jam-packed with hits, in spirited arrangements from musical director Rob Green.
It is 1969, and a local farm is under threat of closure, but the locals are determined to save it through a fundraising campaign. Greengrocer Arthur, played by David Ahmad is keen on something more traditional, but his son Harry (Lucas Button) is lured into involvement with a group of hippies led by Cloud, Sonny and Claire (Annabelle Aquino, Perry Moore and Sorrel Jordan), who are planning a music festival fueled more on flower power than morris dancing.
Alongside Harry’s journey of self-discovery we see Arthur trying to cling onto the memories he has of an England before the ravages of war. Meanwhile Joan, played by Kate Milner Evans, is mourning the losses that the war dealt her, and finds a new lease of life with this group of young people who want to ‘Give Peace a Chance’ – one of many numbers that get the audience clapping along. The gloriously nostalgic score includes a wide range of familiar classics from the show’s title song to ‘My Generation’ and ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’.
Charlotte Murphy’s production design keeps most of the structural set to a substantial band-stand to one side of the elliptical auditorium, but fills the stage with a riot of colour in her flamboyant period costumes. Co-directors Lucy Thatcher and Rob Green bring tremendous energy and strong characterisations from the cast, and Thatcher’s choreography ensures that the show is as much a visual as an aural feast.
The storytelling is about as anarchic as the period it evokes, but it is supercharged with a sense of love and hope, and this is a feelgood show that is guaranteed to send you home humming the tunes and with a smile on your face. The sun really is shining in Grosvenor Park this summer, and the times are quite definitely a-changin, so this feels like the perfect show to let your hair down with a glass of something chilled under the setting sun.
Let the Sun Shine plays in repertory at Grosvenor Park alongside Outlaws: A Robin Hood Story, until 23rd August.
Star Rating: Four stars ★★★★
Production photography by Mark McNulty
Kate Milner-Evans as Joan 
The cast of Let the Sun Shine
This review was originally written for and
published by Musical Theatre Review
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