Stickin’ Boy – Etcetera Theatre

Stickin’ Boy was reviewed at the Etcetera Theatre, London.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Any production that attempts to evoke the spirit of the mighty Clash, the legendary punk band fronted by Joe Strummer, has to be worth catching, and so it proved here with Stickin’ Boy at the award-winning, but very cramped Etcetera Theatre.

Coming out of Camden Town underground station and passing a long queue of eager music fans outside the famed Electric Ballroom venue was enough to get the live music juices flowing, expectations being high for an interesting evening.

A punk rock musical play set in Soho’s vice trade in 1977? What’s not to like? What this production did have is the bravery to incorporate a few twists on the norm and the screen visuals of central character Eddy as an older guy (Martin Muscatt) reflecting on his early childhood, parents and influences worked very well.

The acting, however, certainly in the initial scenes, torpedoed that creative advantage, being so creaky that 20 minutes in, you asked yourself the question, to quote the much-missed Mr Strummer, ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ But, like much of the music that came out of the punk era, the show’s rawness was its attraction, and this was, in many ways, the epitome of Fringe theatre at its finest – warts and all.

With most songs here written by Muscatt and boasting additional material by none other than Mick Jones of The Clash, there was a few cracking tunes amid a fair few pedestrian ones. Belting out ‘Punk Rock Grifter’, Tom Patrick Coley was spot-on as Eddy, a 20-year-old aspiring punk musician trapped in a dead-end packing job, living with his alcoholic father and sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘No Future’.

Desperate to form a band and make something of his life, everything changes when he meets Candy (Phoebe White), a sex worker who persuades him to become her new stickin’ boy, posting calling cards in Soho phone boxes to promote her services and those of her colleagues.

The good news is that he suddenly has an income, the bad news being that 1970s Soho is a pretty sordid place full of nasty characters, like Psycho Jack, played with genuinely frightening menace by Ben Durling.

If the initial scenes did this production few favours, the latter part was its salvation. White’s rendition of ‘So Far Down’, a heart-rending, superbly delivered song which exposed the agony of drug addiction, a life in complete turmoil and her fragile mental state, was certainly a highlight.

Then there was the imperious Madame O, the worldly-wise font of all knowledge who controlled her girls with a rod of iron. Jennie Bellestar was the perfect, more experienced performer to stabilise the whole project, her vocals raucously engaging throughout, not least during ‘I See’ (Muscatt/Mathias).

The small live band, nestled in the corner and with hardly enough room to change chord, provided the perfect soundtrack to the high and lows of Eddy’s life and those affected around him.

Raw, gritty and not very pretty, this production nevertheless did work, and at times very well indeed, not least when the three working girls were present. The somewhat frightening but magnetic Mandy was a kind of New York goth/punk hybrid, played by Jojo O’Donoghue with admirable energy and constant grimaces in full, almost Hammer horror make-up.

Add the supremely confident and effortlessly sultry portrayal of Wendy from Freya Thomas, a young performer surely destined for more higher-profile roles, and the female contingent of this cast made for an irresistibly strong, very varied vocal ensemble.

This production was always going to be more about the music than the quality of the acting. If that can be sharpened up a bit, then Stickin’ Boy deserves to be sticking around a good bit longer on the Fringe circuit.

Derek Smith