SHOW OF THE WEEK
Five Guys Named Moe
Marble Arch Theatre, London Until 17th Feb 2018 2hrs
Such is the success of Clarke Peters’s warm-hearted, pitch-perfect, high-energy, jukebox tribute show to the rhythm ’n’ blues sax jazz legend Louis Jordan, that he is reviving it for the umpteenth time – no longer as the star but the director – in a pop-up theatre designed to bring a flavour of New Orleans in the Fifties to London.
It’s a spiegeltent inside the Marble Arch roundabout with a cocktail bar in the foyer shaking up bourbon sours and Hurricane cocktails that you can take in to the performing space, the Funky Butt Club, where a stunning six-piece band is already making this new joint jump.
The plot is barely there: a drunk, rumpled, weepy Nomax (Edward Baruwa, short on soul) is at home in his apartment, his girlfriend Lorraine having upped and left him. Cue the moody ‘It’s early in the morning and I ain’t got nothing but the blues’.
Such is the success of Clarke Peters’s tribute show to the rhythm ’n’ blues sax jazz legend Louis Jordan, that he is reviving it for the umpteenth time. Above, Dex Lee as Know Moe
Out of his radio spring five bright-eyed and bouncy, zoot-suited guys named Moe, beaming wildly, singing in glorious harmony and dancing up a storm
Then, out of his radio spring five bright-eyed and bouncy, zoot-suited guys named Moe, beaming wildly, singing in glorious harmony and dancing up a storm, while dishing up advice to Nomax on his woman problems.
They kick off with a warning – Brother Beware – before suggesting that Safe, Sane And Single might be the way forward.
But by the end, Nomax has learned to say sorry and ask Lorraine Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby? and it’s smiles all round.
As far as love stories go, Antony and Cleopatra this ain’t. The narrative slips out of sight entirely when Nomax settles down to watch a cabaret, an excuse for the fabulously engaging five guys to shimmy, swivel, shake and shuffle expertly on an O-shaped conveyor belt, YO! Sushi-style, simply letting the good times roll with Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens and Choo Choo Ch’Boogie and more.
By the end, Nomax has learned to say sorry and ask Lorraine Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby? and it’s smiles all round. Above, Edward Baruwa as Nomax
As far as love stories go, Antony and Cleopatra this ain’t. The narrative slips out of sight entirely when Nomax settles down to watch a cabaret. Idris Kargbo (above) as Little Moe
But it’s all done with such effortless charm and infectious exuberance that when the words to Push Ka Pi Shi Pie fluttered down from above, the audience cheerfully raised the roof and then leapt up to join a conga line.
The perfect date night.
The Knowledge 2hrs 5mins
Charing Cross Theatre, London Until 11th Nov
Rating: 
Simon Block’s stage adaptation of Jack Rosenthal’s 1979 award-winning TV cabbie drama – a journey of self-discovery through the streets of London – has the theatrical horsepower of a moped. But director Maureen Lipman, Rosenthal’s widow, keeps the engine ticking over nicely as four cockney rookie cabbies attempt to memorise The Knowledge – 15,000 roads within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. Only 30 per cent of those who start will ever make it.
It’s somewhat underpowered to be up my dramatic street but it has a period charm and authenticity. Above, Stephen Pacey as Mr Burgess alongside Louis Callaghan as Miss Staveley
Unemployed Chris (a fab stage debut from Fabien Frankel), dry-cleaner Ted (descended from cabbies) and good-for-nothing Gordon are being variously pushed and encouraged by a wife or girlfriend. Miss Staveley is doing it for herself.
Overseeing their progress – quite literally in Nicolai Hart-Hansen’s set of traffic lights and street signs, where his office is high on a platform – is Stephen Pacey’s Mr Burgess, attempting to put off the trainees by stuffing a Vicks inhaler up each nostril, pretending to be hard of hearing or making sexist comments. And by the end, of course, they will have learned his lesson, that to pass The Knowledge they ‘have to know people and, compared to people, The Knowledge is marzipan’.
It’s somewhat underpowered to be up my dramatic street but this has a period charm and authenticity that makes it worth hailing.
Driving Miss Daisy 1hr 50mins
Richmond Theatre, London, and touring Until 2nd Dec
Rating:
It’s 30 years since Alfred Uhry’s play – a gentle story of a tenuous bridge built across a racial and class divide in Atlanta, Georgia, based on the author’s own grandmother – won him a Pulitzer Prize. The subsequent film also snagged Uhry an Oscar for best screenplay.
It’s a simple piece, simply staged, here played with all the leisurely graciousness of the upper-class Deep South, deftly depicting over 25 years from 1948 a growing, sometimes grudging acceptance by a rich, 72-year-old Jewish widow of one man and changing times.
Derek Griffiths (above) starring as the chauffeur, Hoke, to the penny-pinching, mistrustful Miss Daisy
When appearances-obsessed Daisy crashes her car, she is forced by her son Boolie (an excellent Teddy Kempner) to take on a black chauffeur, Hoke.
The frosty rapport – as the penny-pinching, mistrustful old lady refuses to let him drive her to the Piggly Wiggly shop, and even wrongly accuses him of stealing a tin of salmon – eventually thaws, notably when she discovers he can’t read and teaches him.
Over the years the civil rights movement progresses and the pair’s relationship takes steps forwards and back just like the race issue itself. Hoke is a humble man yet with great self-respect who is not afraid to fight back when he has to. Derek Griffiths plays him with understated emotion and perfect comic timing (clearly honed years ago on Play Away) as he commands the old lady’s car (sparely represented by a silver steering wheel).
Siân Phillips’s (above) prickly, proud Daisy is vocally a little one-note at first but her performance grows as she mellows, showing kindness clothed in brusqueness
Siân Phillips’s prickly, proud Daisy is vocally a little one-note at first but her performance grows as she mellows, showing kindness clothed in brusqueness, and the pair turn into a gently bickering odd couple. At the end, in a home with dementia, her submitting to Hoke feeding her is a poignant final moment.
Not exactly earth-shattering stuff, and Richard Beecham’s Bath Theatre Royal production could do with revving up a gear in places, but if you wonder why this vehicle is worth cranking up again, the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, provide the answer.
Mark Cook