Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical

Picture: Craig Sugden

Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical continues at the Lyric Theatre, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Getting truly under the skin of a music icon, translating that effectively to the stage and entertaining a West End audience was never going to be easy. Bob Marley, reggae superstar, political protagonist, human rights ambassador and Tottenham Hotspur fan, died tragically young at the age of 36, cruelly cutdown by cancer. By that time though, he’d already long achieved global fame, created an impressive catalogue of catchy hit songs that have endured and whose heartfelt and hard-hitting lyrics still resonant today. Maybe even more given the current racially volatile climate and social and economic division.

It all hinges, of course, on the performance of Arinzé Kene as Robert Nesta Marley and it’s a role he truly embraces, full of passion, totally committed and pretty much faultless. From the opening track to the finale, he looks like he was born to play the role, taking the audience on a chronological journey from his tough roots, co-forming the Wailers with Peter Tosh (Natey James) and Bunny Wailer (Jacade Simpson), moving to London and then around the world as his fame increased. Shot at along the way, and perhaps most unsurprisingly of all, arrested for marijuana possession in 1977, quite what he thought when he first met punk rockers on Chelsea’s King’s Road is anyone’s guess.

Creatively, this show has impressive credentials as it was fashioned by those that knew Marley best – his daughter, reggae artist Cedella Marley and from his Island Records label days, Suzette Newman and Chris Blackwell (book by award-winning writer Lee Hall). Of course, despite its impeccable pedigree, director Clint Dyer’s production could still have turned out to be just a Jamaican-themed, reggae-rooted jukebox musical but even if the early dour looking sets don’t exactly shout exotic Caribbean sunsets, it’s the cast’s evident passion and respect for Marley – the man and the artist – that ultimately wins the day. Okay, the narrative is a bit clunky, lines delivered nervously and some storylines lack conviction, but when the songs kick in, all that becomes a minor issue – after all, how can you not revel in hearing classics like ‘Could You Be Loved,’ ‘Stir It Up’ and ‘Jamming’?

As Rita Marley, Gabrielle Brooks is simply wonderful, and when she duets with Kene for ‘No Woman No Cry’, it’s tissue time at the Lyric in a glorious few minutes worthy of a standing ovation in itself, and almost getting one. Another notable performance comes from Shanay Holmes, as Miss World 1976 and Marley’s new love, Cindy Breakspeare.

“Get Up Stand Up!” sang Kene and the fired-up cast for the finale, and the audience duly complied without hesitation. Marley’s music may have been entrenched in Trenchtown, Jamaica but in 2021 it still has the power to move all creeds, everywhere. That is the key to this production succeeding or otherwise, but it certainly deserves a decent run. Come the end, the joint was jumping – and we’re not talking re-creational tobacco…

Derek Smith