Picture: Alex Brenner
Who Do Ya Love? continues at Assembly George Square Studios – Studio One until 25 August 2024.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Celebrating the rise of Harry Casey from working in record stores to becoming known as the ‘KC’ as in KC and the Sunshine Band, this biographical musical is packed full of hit song after hit song. Once again, the 1970s are trendy, complete with brightly coloured clothing, only given up for silver and sparkles.
This is a great young cast – the choreography (Lisa Stevens, who also directs) is really authentic and enthusiastically performed. The vocal performances are wonderful: these songs require great range and are brilliantly sung. Most enjoyable.
There are four principal characters with KC himself played by Fionán O’Carroll, his girlfriend Dee (Paige Fenlon), Annabelle Terry as Gina and Peter Camilleri as Orly who is also a love interest for KC.
Jukebox musicals generally fall into one of two camps: firstly, as the basis for a new book (Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You); secondly as a dramatisation of a career (Jersey Boys, Beautiful – The Carole King Musical). There needs to be a balance between the songs and dialogue to convey the key aspect: ‘story’.
When there is a score as strong as this, the book has to be developed to match it. It appears that story has been given some attention as Gina steers KC towards creating a show about his early years and sexual awakening by seeming to issue guidelines to create a book for a musical. The show then continues with the fantastically staged musical numbers and dialogue more or less being used as a cover for costume changes. This is backed up by noticing KC seems to make most of his costume changes onstage. Gives the audience plenty of time to admire orange Y-fronts – very ’70s!
The story has been stripped back to the bone in order to play every single song in KC’s repertoire. And while the songs are great, glittery celebrations, the show itself could be more satisfying. Once the plot is given time to breathe, this should become a great West End contender. The theatrical giant, ATG, is credited as a producer and it’s great to see them supporting new work at Fringe level.
Fiona Orr
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