All Or Nothing – The Mod Musical continues at The Vaults, London until 27 August, then on tour until 12 November.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
As someone who didn’t know his ‘Itchycoo Park’ from his ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’ until the other night, this edgy, noisy Small Faces musical cocktail in a subterranean space below Waterloo’s rattling trains was not the first thing I had in mind for a 48th wedding anniversary treat.
This was never my sort of music, wrapped up as I was in the 1960s with Dylan and Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, and a sprinkling of the young Streisand when a change from folkie mode was called for.
But a treat it undoubtedly was, and a most appropriate one, because 48 years ago those short-arsed East End mods were bang in the middle of their brief four-year dalliance with international fame before drink, drugs, fall-outs and dodgy managers did their dirty work.
Thanks to a fine script by one-time EastEnders star Carol Harrison – Martine McCutcheon’s fiery mum Louise at the end of the 1990s – this story of the rise and fall of the group’s distinctive lead singer Steve Marriott, cliched though it has to be, carries an air of authenticity.
And why not? The author is a genuine East Ender and these days has an MA in scriptwriting and teaches too.
Its typical Cockney wit, with Harrison saving some of the best lines for herself as Marriott’s mini-skirted mother Kay, leavens the tragedy of the group’s disintegration and the untimely death of its genius-tinged leader at 44 after a fire at his Essex pad.
What’s so attractive about this musical is that, as with The Kinks’ story Sunny Afternoon, you don’t actually have to be a fan of The Small Faces to enjoy a rattling good evening.
That is a measure of the vigour of writer-producer Harrison’s storytelling and the astonishing multi-tasking of the actor-musos imitating pop icons Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan, the keyboards man brought in for the unlikely reason that Jimmy Winston was too tall for the group!
Marriott, fierce on guitar as well as of voice, is wonderfully played by Guildford School of Acting graduate Tim Edwards as a young man and by Chris Simmons, of EastEnders, The Bill and Casualty fame, narrating the sad tale as the beer-swilling, middle-aged Marriott, reflecting on what he might have done differently.
It is hard to speak highly enough of either, Simmons returning to the role he first inhabited in 2014 but which was played by Mark Newnham when All Or Nothing was last seen at The Vaults in the spring.
Joshua Dowen (Ronnie), Josh Maddison (Mac), Drew-Levi Huntsman (Kenney) and Joseph Peters (Jimmy) are the amazing talents who team up with Edwards to bring those unforgettable hits vibrantly back to life.
The title song was the group’s only No. 1, knocking none other than The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby’ two-sider off the top in September 1966.
Don Arden, the manager who got away with paying them buttons under an outrageously one-sided contract, didn’t think much of their sound and brought in songwriters Kenny Lynch and Mort Shuman to compose ‘Sha La La La Lee’, the more commercial sound that got them on to Top of the Pops, even though Marriott had to grit his teeth to sing it.
The awful Arden (father of Sharon Osbourne) is gleefully played, cigar in mouth, by Russell Floyd, while Danielle Johnson (Cher), Sophia Behn (Cathy McGowan, Dusty Springfield) and Daniel Beales (Tony Blackburn, David Jacobs, Sonny and Stanley Unwin) meet with mixed success in bringing back memories of other singers, comedians and TV personalities of that era.
Dami Olukoya, as Marriott’s one-time lover, the American soul singer PP Arnold, has her big moment with an unaccompanied ‘Angel of the Morning’, while Martin Teall, Tamsin January and Matthew Churcher all add to the fun in director Tony McHale’s high-energy production that never flags, even though I was seeing it in preview.
In truth, most of them have had enough practice, having done the show for seven weeks on tour, and now there’s a month at Waterloo before the piece heads for 16 provincial dates (taking the company up to the middle of November).
Fascinatingly, Marriott’s daughter Mollie, a singer-songwriter in her own right, is listed as vocal coach/creative consultant. She has clearly been a great help in making the show feel as authentic as possible, while Rebecca Brower’s set, right down to the old gig posters on the auditorium walls, and Charlotte Espiner’s well-researched costumes, are admirable.
Make no mistake, this may be Fringe theatre but it is highly-polished, high-octane stuff that’s well worth seeing, whatever sort of music rattles your cage.
I’m alway loath to give the maximum five stars to any musical without any original music in it, but this gets pretty close and you won’t regret spending an evening with it, I promise!
Jeremy Chapman
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