Picture: Will Green
Caroline – A New Musical was reviewed at the New Theatre, Peterborough. The production continues at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester (3-12 June) and Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds (16-20 June).
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Vikki Stone’s Caroline – A New Musical arrived at the New Theatre, Peterborough with plenty of swagger, transporting audiences back to the rebellious heyday of pirate radio and the birth of a cultural revolution. Inspired by the story of Radio Caroline, the offshore station that shook up British broadcasting in the 1960s, the musical blends fact with fiction in a jukebox celebration of pop music, youth culture and East Anglian identity. Developed by the East Anglian Touring Consortium and directed by Douglas Rintoul and Alex Thorpe, the show clearly has affection for its subject matter, embracing nostalgia while paying tribute to the maverick broadcasters who challenged the BBC monopoly.
Set against the backdrop of Clacton and the Essex coastline, the story centres on Caroline (Claire Lee Shenfield), a young woman yearning for something bigger than life at the local greengrocers, and her ambitious boyfriend Robbie (Jake Halsey-Jones), whose passion for music leads him to a life-changing opportunity as a DJ aboard the Radio Caroline ship.
Alongside Caroline’s spirited best friend Mary (Eloise Richardson) and the charismatic station founder Declan (Joey Hickman), the musical charts the excitement and upheaval that follow the station’s rise in popularity despite being a pirate station, particularly facing government opposition from the Postmaster General (Gareth Cooper).
Stone wisely keeps the narrative accessible, avoiding excessive historical detail in favour of a light romance wrapped in social change. However, while the plot moves briskly and entertainingly enough, the characters themselves rarely evolve beyond familiar archetypes. Caroline is positioned as the emotional anchor of the piece, but her personal journey feels underexplored, while Robbie’s transformation from dreamer to radio celebrity lacks any real complexity needed to make the stakes truly resonate.
Arguably it’s a soap opera at sea with 1960s songs, floating in middling waters. It would help if the songs moved the plot or gave deeper insight into how the characters are feeling (occasionally they do, but not often). Instead, they’re mostly chosen to entertain the audience, being effectively a greatest hits package of classics, packed with recognisable crowd-pleasers from artists including The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Lulu and the Four Tops. The song choices are well curated from an entertainment perspective, creating an infectious atmosphere that lifts the production whenever the script threatens to drift.
Numbers are woven into the action with varying degrees of subtlety, though the strength of the songs compensates well enough. Stone’s book, by comparison, is far less assured and suffers in comparison. Dialogue scenes often lean heavily into soap opera melodrama, and several potentially interesting themes (sexism, class aspiration, the commodification of youth culture) are introduced only to be abandoned before they gain traction. As a result, the show feels emotionally lightweight despite touching upon genuinely fascinating historical territory.
The set design (Stella Backman) succeeds in evoking both the gritty charm of the Essex coast and the claustrophobic excitement of life aboard the radio ship, while fluid scene transitions maintain momentum. The staging embraces a concert-like aesthetic, with instruments woven into the action and actor-musicians constantly in motion (delivered seamlessly at certain times and clunkily in others). Costumes capture the vibrant optimism of the Swinging Sixties without descending into parody, and Sundeep Saini’s choreography injects the musical numbers with colour and vitality.
Shenfield brings warmth and sincerity to Caroline, grounding the show whenever the writing threatens to become overly sentimental, while Halsey-Jones delivers a charismatic Robbie whose vocal performance is probably the highlight of the night. Richardson provides strong support as Mary and Cooper also earns some of the evening’s biggest laughs as the pompous Postmaster General.
It’s a shame that despite such strong performances, the material rarely allows the actors to develop fully rounded emotional arcs. Too many relationships are sketched rather than explored, meaning moments of conflict or heartbreak often arrive without sufficient dramatic build-up. Still, the sheer versatility of the company and their impressive multi-skilling of acting, singing, dancing and playing instruments more than makes up for it.
Caroline – A New Musical is an undeniably enjoyable night at the theatre, buoyed by a terrific soundtrack, superb musicianship and a palpable affection for one of Britain’s most interesting broadcasting stories. While the script struggles to provide the emotional depth or character development needed to elevate it beyond a conventional jukebox musical, the production compensates with energy, humour and a constant stream of toe-tapping classics.
It may not entirely hit the dramatic high notes it aims for, or explore its subject matter as well as it perhaps could, but thanks to its excellent performers and irresistible soundtrack, Caroline still proves itself a lively and entertaining voyage.
Rob Bartley
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.