The audience at the Queen's felt very much at home with this new musical about an east end boy made good.

Chris Bond is responsible for the words but he didn't have to worry about the songs because his subject is Lionel Bart, the composer of Oliver, Blitz and many other successful shows who created hundreds of songs by singing them into a tape recorder as he couldn't actually write music.

The songs are chosen to tell the story of his life - so when a dodgy financial advisor gets Bart into tax troubles he becomes Fagin singing 'You've got to pick a pocket or two'; childhood friends in a violent relationship become Bill and Nancy and she gets to sing 'As long as he needs me'.

Success can be dangerous and the show tells of Bart's financial extravagance, bankruptcy, descent into alcoholism and show business failures in later life.

The cast attack the songs and dialogue with great energy, bringing to life London in the blitz, rehearsals at the Theatre Royal, Stratford and the glitzy but perilous pleasures of the 1960s.

Matt Devitt, a very believable Lionel Bart, explores in depth the journey from cocky confidence to extreme suffering. He really engages with Lionel's own analysis that all his life he was really working hard to win love.

The show does suffer from the pitfalls of biographical plays: as a result of focussing on the main character other people tend to become 'wallpaper'.

Scenes which showed real relationships were the most satisfying and Diana Croft stood out as Joan Littlewood, director of the Theatre Royal, as she and Bart fought over artistic principles.

David Barber was a suave on-stage musical director and the set designer, Mark Walters, provided a colourful evocation of places: a bombed out church, the underground and a whole swimming pool.

Very lively, very colourful - and very tuneful! Worth catching.

Allison Wollard

BBC Essex - 31st August 2006

2002 - 2007 http://www.return-to-the-forbidden-planet.co.uk