A harmonious throwback to the boy bands of yesteryear.
FOREVER PLAID
PLAYWRIGHT: Stuart Ross
DIRECTOR, CHOREOGRAPHER: Elizma Badenhorst
MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Rowan Bakker
CAST: Jay Hlatshwayo, Kirk Harrower, Michael Hyams and Johan Nöthling
VENUE: Theatre on the Square, Sandton
UNTIL: December 20
RATING: ****
THE close harmonies of vocal boy/men-only groups no doubt represent the most charming decades in the evolution of pop music. It all happened in the 1950s and 1960s. As with certain car manufacturers where retro models have made a successful comeback, so the retro sounds of yore echo their charm into a new era in which we start realising that so-called instant gratification isn’t really always that gratifying.
Forever Plaid is a musical homage to that period, written by Stuart Ross. It has done pretty well on the off-Broadway and similar circuits in America and Daphne Kuhn of the Theatre on the Square and producer of this show, was spot-on to choose it as their year-end chill-out event.
What you admire about the staging is that young, past and present students in musical theatre from the Oakfields College in Pretoria feature in it. In a way it tells the story of what happened to most of those groups trying to sing their way to the top.
They started humbly. Most of them were from poor backgrounds. Only a minority of them had proper vocal training. They learnt from performing. The imagined members of Forever Plaid were driving in their cherry red Mercury convertible when they were hit by a bus filled with Catholic school girls who were on their way to see The Beatles’ American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. They survived, but the four youngsters were killed.
The show Forever Plaid opens in the afterlife, with the four of them carrying candles in a holy-like environment, but with their psyches still shattered from the experience of death. Through some astro-technical wizardry they come back and have one chance to do the show they never could do while alive. It’s an entertaining kind of dummy run with hilarious things happening while they try to fine-tune their act.
Hlatshwayo, Harrower, Hyams and Nöthling, the four singer-dancer-actors, are already established entertainers. As individual voices they all have a lot going for them, with Hyams’ bass voice as Smudge a particular asset, and Hlatshwayo as Frankie, a lighter one resounding with vocal charm.
Harrower’s voice often has a flighty lightness as the youngish looking and sounding Sparky, while Nöthling as the make-believe, somewhat struggling Jinx character, knows exactly how to handle his voice to demonstrate those personal “challenges”.
In some of the songs their harmonies do sound slightly awry because this vocal group is still challenged by pure intonation. However, many of the songs sound perfect.
The spectrum of hits is wide, with each one placed perfectly in the musical, while continuity in the show is worked out with fluency because of Elizma Badenhorst’s ideal tempo and eye for detail in her refreshing direction and choreography while managing to keep a number of surprises in store.
Particularly entertaining is the Ed Sullivan Show sequence where all the details of this TV-programme are run through in three minutes and 11 seconds, as well as the Private Functions insert which stands out as the most hilarious scene on any stage this reviewer experienced so far this year.
Rowan Bakker’s musical direction forms the foundation of the show. Not only his piano playing, but also the energy which flows from him keeps the whole production focused.