Love it or hate it, the juke box musical has been with us for nearly 30 years and while claims of its demise are probably premature it needs a fresher approach than the one at Motown The Musical.For those who don’t know (and that won’t be anyone leaving this show!) Berry Gordy was the founder of Motown - one of the most important record labels in the history of popular music which launched the careers of Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5 to name but a few but phew, what a few! We then travel back in time to a young BG (as Marvin Gaye later calls him) and from there we follow his story until we end up back in 1983 at the TV special which bookends the show.
So much time is spent on the early years that by the interval I wondered if we kept up this level of detail whether we would finish before midnight! Did we really need to dwell so long on Gordy’s insistence that The Supremes sing the standard You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You? With such a wonderful catalogue of songs you can understand the producers’ dilemma not wanting to leave anything out. So we get over 50 songs delivered with energy and pizazz but mostly just snatches crammed into a quick social history of the civil rights movement.
When we do get a full version, and story and song compliment each other, there are some nice set pieces but all in the first half. You’re All I Need To Get By is used effectively and beautifully sung as Gordy and Ross’s love duet and Act One closes with images of the Vietnam war to the strains of What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye (a sweet-voiced Sifiso Mazibuko). Cedric Neal plays Gordy more as a knowing TV host than the ambitious, ex-boxer and factory worker that he was but there’s no doubting his charismatic charms and vocal chops.
Stand out performance though was Lucy St Louis as Diana Ross. Not only did she get her vocal mannerisms and movements she also got that strange mixture of big-eyed fragility and hard-nosed ambition as well as doing a convincing Billie Holiday for the film Lady Sings The Blues. However the biggest cheer was reserved for the Jackson 5 and a cute Michael Jackson (Nana Ngyeman-Bediako) the rest of the Motown stars, a cursory appearance by Stevie Wonder late on in the show and Gordy’s faithful lieutenant Smokey Robinson, just proved how amazing the real ones were.
Act two loses the plot - quite literally. Motown moves to LA but we’re not told why, Gordy and Diana’s relationship ends for vague professional/personal reasons and then rival record companies lure away his stars with better offers. As the story takes on a downward trajectory, so it accelerates towards the 1983 TV special. The climax of the show is now whether Gordy will turn up at his own party or sulk at home. It all seems a little overdone and trivialises the social history of the first act. It doesn’t even leave enough time at the end for the traditional juke box mega mix that the crowd really wanted.
More importantly there’s never any attempt to answer the question why all these young, talented kids happened to be in Detroit at the same time. What was in the water? Somewhere there is a stonking Motown musical trying to get out but instead it turns into Berry Gordy the musical - a narcissistic piece more concerned with one man’s legacy than telling a truly remarkable story.
Last night, May 21st, saw an event at the Cadogan Hall conceived to encourage more kids from culturally diverse backgrounds to not only appreciate West End performances but to aspire to perform themselves.