Picture: Pamela Raith
La Bamba was reviewed at Leicester’s Curve Theatre. The UK tour continues until 25 November 2023.
Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩
The opening riff of Ritchie Valens’ ‘La Bamba’ might be enough to make feet tap and shoulders shimmy, but is it enough to warrant or sustain a new musical for UK stages? The creatives behind the new show of the same name certainly hope so, with the arrival of this story of Sofia (played by newcomer Inês Fernandez), a young woman’s journey to make her songwriting dreams come true. Fronted by The Wanted’s Siva Kaneswaran as best friend Mateo, and Strictly’s Pasha Kovalev as Sofia’s father Ricardo (and with choreography by Pasha’s Strictly mate Graziano Di Prima), the jukebox musical full of Latino hits is setting off on a UK tour over the next few months, kicking off at Leicester’s Curve.
However, calling La Bamba a musical is a reach. It’s little more than a Strictly-style dance show roughly held together by the thinnest of scripts and no real sense of what it’s trying to say. Songs are arranged by Alfonso Casado-Trigo, and have been included because they sound right, not because they drive the plot. The show takes a long time to establish any sense of character, or why we’re following this story. The best musicals start with their leading characters giving their big “I want….” song, but La Bamba presents itself as a tribute concert from the outset and never really escapes it. Sofia narrates most of the show herself, with minimal book scenes, so we’re told everything rather than shown it, and mostly from her own side with few chances to see other characters’ perspectives. It feels like an unengaging monologue for most of the show, however hard Fernandez tries to sell it.
Paul Morrissey’s book tries to dig deeper but doesn’t really succeed, or make much sense, clearly using the “patchwork shoe-horning” technique to mash a story around the songs that have been included; we see Sofia being pressured to hide her Latino heritage, and the moment she is “truly herself”, she sings a Shakira song rather than something original, so still trying to copy someone else; the story tries to touch on the social divide of the time; and while there have been some great protest songs over the decades, Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Let’s Get Loud’ isn’t one of them. It all just feels half-baked and thinly crafted, the hope being that the choreography will hide the holes and the audience won’t care because the songs are fun.
Director Ray Roderick gives us a two-dimensional by-the-numbers stage show with little originality or flair, or anything to really lift it to a piece of theatre. Production values for UK touring productions also appear to still be on the decline, with the minimal set (design by Justin Williams) being a framing of scaffolding structure dispersed with light-up panels and small items of furniture being wheeled on and off of the mostly-bare stage for most of the show. Too many times, Fernandez sits alone on the stairs in the middle of the stage, and the sense of wasted space around her is immense.
Fernandez does well for a professional debut (although appears far more suited to Sofia’s slower tender moments rather than the dancier numbers where she loses a little control and finesse), and Stefani Ariza is captivating as mother Elena, but otherwise this show belongs to the dynamic and talented ensemble which delivers the show’s only real strength; the choreography by Graziano Di Prima and Erica Da Silva is energetic, vibrant and full of soul, performed by a brilliantly-talented group of dancers, and their scenes are full of focus and drive, something unfortunately lacking in the rest of the production.
The show is being sold on the names of Kaneswaran and Kovalev, but fans of both stand to be disappointed. Kaneswaran isn’t a natural actor (or particularly strong singer), and there’s a massive divide between a background singer in a boy band and a theatrical leading man, which Kaneswaran sadly falls right through. He performs awkwardly with no sense of rhythm or charisma. Plus Kovalev does little for most of the show aside from some opening choreography and lots of walking around in the background of scenes where other characters do the talking. He does try his hand at acting briefly in the show’s second half, but it’s to stilted effect.
As a celebration of Latin dance and choreography, La Bamba is entertaining enough, and Di Prima and Da Silva’s choreography is electric, but judged as the deeper show it’s trying to be, the fancy footwork is sadly the only really good thing going for it.
Rob Bartley
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