Edinburgh Playhouse
Three stars
When gravel-voiced blues singer Rod Stewart sold his soul for a life of
pop excess accompanied by a roll-call of ever-blonder accessories, it's
unlikely that the devil made him do it. That's exactly what happens,
however, to Stuart, the geeky hero of Ben Elton's jukebox musical of
Rod the Mod's hits which has been on the go for a decade now.
Stuart works in a garage in Detroit, where he fawns over the equally
bookish Mary. An intervention by a peroxided Satan not only gives
Stuart the confidence and star quality of his name-sake, but his
promiscuous proclivities as well. Taken under the wing of archetypal
rock chick Baby Jane, Stuart and his new band blaze a trail to the
top, but there's a little part of Stuart that's always the nice guy.
If all this sounds ever so slightly ridiculous, bear in mind that Elton
probably knows his Goethe and his Marlowe as well as Peter Cook and
Dudley Moore did when they reimagined their swinging sixties take on
Faust in Bedazzled. In terms of the sort of rock and roll mythology
depicted here, Elton will have also been fully versed in Robert Johnson
and the Rolling Stones.
The parade of big-haired blondes, black leather pants and hot legs
galore probably matter more in Caroline Jay Ranger's slickly
one-dimensional production, and the big voices of Ben Heathcote's
Stuart, Jenna Lee-James' Mary, Jade Ewen's Dee Dee and Tiffany Graves'
dual turn as Satan and Baby Jane even more so. Michael McKell hams
things up deliciously as Stoner in a somewhat dated looking music
business parable which at its best remains a thrustingly infectious
romp.
The Herald, February 19th 2014
ends
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