Forever Plaid

For the first few moments of Forever Plaid, I feared disaster. Or boredom at the very least, as four singers climbed onto an almost empty stage and started crooning songs from a long dead era.

Then the individual personalities came out, the harmonies melded beautifully, and a mental shift saw me accept this as a sweet, innocent and entirely unchallenging piece of nostalgia for a time I don’t even remember. This is a show you could take your granny to see, and she’d probably be the ideal audience.

It’s collection of doo-wop style songs from the 1950s and 60s hung around the story of a clean-cut American boy band, The Plaids, who are wiped out in a road smash before they hit the big time. We catch them in limbo, being given the chance to stage the gig that never happened and trying to remember how to do it.

The quartet performing in this production by VR Theatrical are Musanete Sakupwanya as Jinx, Tiaan Rautenbach as Sparky, Yamikani Mahaka-Phiri as Smudge and Danny Meaker as Francis. They all have lovely voices and a nice stage presence, with Mahaka-Phiri thundering out a deep bass boom.

What held my attention mostly though was Sakupwanya, who is gorgeous as Jinx with his shy and innocent demeanour and a real belter of a velvet voice. He’s the one you can’t stop watching. The others deliver strong performances too, although Rautenbach gives his character a little too much nasal whine to make his voice truly enjoyable.

Director Jaco van Rensburg created the choreography, and there are some charming and well-polished dance routines in the gentle style befitting that sedate musical era.

The book by Stuart Ross is undemanding, giving each man enough lines to display some personality and some clean, tame humour in the light-hearted banter. But really it's a vehicle for the songs by groups such as Eddie Fisher, The Four Lads and The Ames Brothers, none of which I’ve heard of. The numbers also include Catch A Falling Star by Perry Como, and Perfidia, written by Alberto Dominguez and dating all the way back to 1938.

Then there’s an intentionally excruciating rehash of a Beatles number, with the men telling us that this new group is starting to hit the headlines, and giving us an Americanish version.

What would do the show a favour is if the initial voice-over that introduces it was rerecorded, as its American drawl and pace had the audience straining to understand the crucial event of a car crash that’s wiped out the men we’re about to meet.

Forever Plaid has an incredibly short first half, at about 35 minutes, and could probably run right through to better effect.

Forever Plaid runs at Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre until November 3 then moves to Cape Town’s Theatre On The Bay from November 6 – 23. Tickets from Computicket. Photos by Christiaan Kotze