SMOKEY JOE’S CAFÉ

DIRECTOR: Jerry Zaks

CAST: Ken Ard, Brenda Braxton, Victor Trent Cook, B. J. Crosby and DeLee Lively

CLASSIFICATION: A

RATING: 2/5

Ster Kinekor are now also screening Broadway plays/musicals on their theatre screens and their latest one is Smokey Joe’s Café.

It’s the original cast from the Grammy Award winning, Tony-award nominated musical revue, the longest running revue on Broadway, featuring the music of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Now, if that previous sentence is the kind of information that will make you pay money to watch a movie, then this is for you. But, otherwise, get the DVD.

This may be an award-winning theatre production, but it doesn’t make the transition to the big screen in a winning way.

The revue starts (and ends) with a song called Neighbourhood, which suggests that there is going to be some sort of story, but there is no unifying theme or even dialogue to the production.

There’s cute-sy little novelty songs like Charlie Brown, ballads like Spanish Harlem and pop songs like Jailhouse Rock and Stand by Me. These songs were first heard on radio during the 1950s so it’s stuff that will make the American baby boomers (and quite a few South Africans) go all nostalgic and gooey.

Leiber and Stoller were two of the most influential songwriters of their time, who brought rhyhm and blues into pop songs, so there could have been a storyline in there somewhere, but alas, there’s nothing.

Instead, the singers simply launch from one song into another, and though they change from song to song, they’re pretty much interchangeable.

Considering it is technically available on DVD, it seems a bit rich of Ster Kinekor to screen this film, for three screenings only today (February 2), Saturday (February 4) and Sunday (February 5) and expect people to pay more than the usual price (tickets for NT Live and Broadway are R120).

The NT Live productions are worth the money because they screen plays currently on the West End, which we would never access otherwise. There’s also added value with an introduction and interviews at half time, to add a bit of spice.

This particularly Broadway musical though, is old and already available with a little bit of legwork.