Tom needs more hair on his chest: A musical packed with the green green grass of home, but short on Jones magic, says QUENTIN LETTS
TOM
Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Two biographical musicals opened this week, one rather provincial and naive, the other an American effort that is, nakedly commercial.
The provincial one is Tom, about singer Sir Tom Jones — he of the big voice, the doormat-hairy chest and What’s New, Pussycat?. It was first seen in pilot form two years ago in his home town of Pontypridd, but has now moved to that barn of a venue, the Cardiff Millennium Centre.
Kit Orton is really good as Jones. He has a fine voice, strong body and pelvic thrusts which had some old dears behind me gasping through their gums. But what a slow start Mike James’s story makes. It waits far too long before giving us a proper pop number. And only at the very end, in a flurry, is the audience given Delilah, The Green Green Grass Of Home, Pussycat and Sex Bomb.
New musical Tom covers the start of Sir Tom Jones' career. It was first seen in pilot form two years ago in his home town of Pontypridd, but has now moved to the Cardiff Millennium Centre
The story, you see, covers the start of Tom’s career. Back then he was Tom Woodward, son of a coal miner — cue backdrops showing pitheads and dank streetscapes. Teenage dreamer Tom marries Linda (Elin Phillips) and we see his struggle to escape the Ponty-pridd pub-singer circuit. Even when he reaches London with his band, things are grim.
All this is interestingly informative — but often desperately slow. A narrator (Phylip Harries, who also plays some mean sax towards the end) fills in gaps. Much of the comedy refers to Welsh parochialism.
I enjoyed this sort of understated British melancholy and can see it might work well in a Mike Leigh type of film. On a West End stage it could hang somewhat.
The whole thing could do with a lot more chest hair, really: a more ruthless eye to entertaining its punters. Yet there is something agreeably decent and truthful about this production — which the Cardiff crowd loved with almost proprietorial pride.
We can see how Jones’s marriage, despite his infidelity, has lasted. There is emotion, wry humour and musical artistry, but it is undone by an unworldly approach to pace and punch: more work needed, please.
'I enjoyed this sort of understated British melancholy and can see it might work well in a Mike Leigh type of film. On a West End stage it could hang somewhat', writes Quentin Letts
MOTOWN
Shaftesbury Theatre
Motown has the opposite problem: too much slick pizzaz, too little characterisation and humanity.
It charts the struggle of producer Berry Gordy to establish the Motown record label in Detroit in the Sixties. The first half is a mess — a blizzard of songs, noise and a laughably weak script. This jukebox compilation, which leans on Sixties Civil Rights politics with hackneyed touches, was tanking until 12-year-old Eshan Gopal came on as young Michael Jackson.
From that point early in the second half, the show achieved lift-off. By the end of the evening there was the requisite sense of goods duly delivered. But it was a close-run thing.
Motown (pictured) charts the struggle of producer Berry Gordy to establish the Motown record label in Detroit in the Sixties
With more than 50 musical numbers, including Please, Mr Postman, My Guy, Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday and the great anthem Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, the band deserves double rations.
Mr Gordy wrote the script for this show. Given that one of the themes is his love affair with Diana Ross, it really might have been wiser for him to let someone else wield the pen.
Gordy is played on stage by Cedric Neal, who throws everything he has at the duff lines. Lucy St Louis makes a likeable Ross.
In a perfect world, it would have the heart of Tom, while Tom would have some of the American import’s street-savvy.
Motown will no doubt be a commercial success, but Tom will stay in the mind longer.
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