"The Drifters Girl". New Theatre

This review was written for The Reviews Hub, and appears on their website here.

Of all the pop music of the late 60s, none more joyfully captures the new vision of racial harmony generated by the US civil rights movement than that of The Drifters. Their music is a carefree celebration of the simple things in life, which young black people had been unable to enjoy in earlier decades: going to the movies, sitting wherever they wanted to sit, making out on beaches, lying on the roof looking at the stars; in short, just enjoying the novelty of free time. Their iconic album cover from 1973’s Greatest Hits sums up their naïve appeal: a comic-book-style collection of panels depicting a young man enjoying life (complete with chauvinistic tropes only too common at the time).

That innocent pleasure persists to this day. At the last count there were at least 20 Drifters-style bands working the British tribute circuit, including The Ultimate Drifters, Let’s Drift and Soul Kinda Wonderful. In fact, for the full Drifters experience, you can go and see the official band themselves. They are currently on tour round the UK, and tickets cost less than all but the cheapest seats for The Drifters Girl at the New Theatre, Oxford.

Of course, that’s the ‘official’ Drifters. Not the ‘original’ Drifters. The Drifters these days are just a tribute band of themselves. They have had over 60 members since they were formed. And therein lies both the plot and the problem of The Drifters Girl. It’s not the story of the band, but of their manager.

The line-up of the band itself chops and changes from the first scene of the show to the last. And with the same (very talented) performers playing the entire rolling roster of singers, there is simply no way the audience can develop any sort of a relationship with even one of them. In a piece of musical exposition in the first half, the names of multiple vocalists flash past on the screen at the back of the stage – Derek Ventura, Doc Green, Charlie Thomas – while the actors explain who came, who went, and why. The real question though is: why should we care? With the exception of Ben E. King, not one of these figures is a household name. The vast majority of the audience is there to enjoy a jukebox musical about The Drifters, not to wade through a quagmire of banal biography, waiting for the next song to come along.

The one constant in the revolving door of The Drifters’ membership club is the central figure of this show: their manager, Faye Treadwell. Carly Mercedes Dyer delivers a blistering performance in the role of Treadwell, carrying several of the band’s lesser hits herself, and overpowering every man in the production with her sheer personality, vocal range and glittering frocks. There is no doubt that Treadwell herself was a remarkable, pioneering figure: a lone, black woman who took on the recording establishment, and fought tooth and nail for her rights. But even the charismatic Dyer cannot change the fact that the driving force of this story is a copyright ownership dispute about who exactly The Drifters are, and who owns the brand. And as driving forces go, that’s not exactly a thrill a minute.

The jeopardy in the story involves former band members setting up their own splinter groups like The New Drifters and The Original Drifters, and Treadwell trying to put a stop to them. To ram this point home, on three separate occasions she declares that the band is like The New York Yankees: the team changes over time, and you can’t recreate it with retired players (conveniently forgetting that, unlike sportsmen, musicians are perfectly capable of performing well into their 80s). In reality the legal battles went on even after Treadwell’s death, finally concluding in 2008, with her daughter Tina taking over ownership of the brand. The Drifters Girl itself is her idea.

On this thinly-stretched base sits a slick, attractive-looking musical. Anthony Ward’s textured set constantly slides into new configurations; neon tubes give an aura of electric kitsch; the four singers change costumes so quickly and so frequently that the wardrobe team alone deserves an award. And of course there is the music. Hits like Saturday Night at the Movies, Under the Boardwalk and Save the Last Dance For Me swoop by with good old-fashioned close harmonies and snappy footwork. But the applause after each song, while enthusiastic, is muted by comparison with the near-delirious screaming after each number in, for example, Mamma Mia. For all the professionalism, there is something missing.

What’s missing is soul. The Drifters were an R&B/Soul group. But the orchestration in this show converts soul music into West End ‘musicalese’. It has lost the simplicity and directness that gives it its distinctive charm, and it has replaced it with mainstream pizzazz. This is soul music for the X Factor generation. One glance at Youtube shows The Drifters of the 1960s singing with a kind of humility, and dancing with modest, minimal movement that is more mesmerising and infectiously enjoyable than any amount of modern choreography.

There are scenes in The Drifters Girl that hint at a more emotionally involving piece of theatre. At one point the band and manager go on a tour of England, and encounter racism at every hotel in the provinces. It makes for a fascinating and troubling montage, especially in a production with an entirely black cast. But the idea is dropped as quickly as it appears, and seems to have little relevance to the main thrust of the show.

There are two kinds of jukebox musical. There are original stories, like The Beatles’ Across the Universe, or Queen’s We Will Rock You, that use the songs thematically to carry the plot and characters forward. And there are musical biographies, which tell the story of the band itself, songs and all, like The Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon. The latter are great when the tale of the band is worth telling, and when the band members themselves are sufficiently big characters. In the case of The Drifters, one forceful manager is not enough on which to build a whole story. Faye Treadwell is a memorable, larger-than-life personality, but the rest of the characters in this show, perhaps appropriately, just drift.