Review: Get Down Tonight - The KC and the Sunshine Band Musical (Charing Cross Theatre)

Review by Daz Gale

⭐️

It’s been a while since Charing Cross Theatre has played host to a strong musical, having staged a fair number of them in years gone by. Hoping to right that wrong is the long-awaited London premiere of Get Down Tonight, a jukebox musical featuring the hits of KC and the Sunshine Band. After its previous iteration was well-received at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, would this production light up the London stage like a glittering disco ball, or should the creative team just cut their losses and give it up?

Get Down Tonight: The KC and the Sunshine Band Musical, to give it its full title, tells the story of the American disco band who provided the soundtrack of the 1970s with hits including ‘That's The Way (I Like It)’, ‘Please Don’t Go’, ‘Shake Your Booty’ and, of course, ‘Get Down Tonight’... or rather, it doesn’t tell their story. In the programme, Henry Wayne Casey states he didn’t want to tell the usual story about a musician’s life and career you might expect from this show, and will have seen time and time again in other bio-musicals. Instead, the musical spans a few years, focusing on Harry and his group of friends, completely glossing over the years he found success with the band.

That is where the problems begin for Get Down Tonight. Breaking the fourth wall mere moments after exploding onto the stage, Casey (Ross Harmon) welcomes the audience to his musical and then debates what type of musical it should be. As they talk about various musical tropes, this narrative is frequently touched upon, with dialogue stating that now is the time for the “I want” song, and using shows such as Hamilton and The Music Man as examples. A clever and meta touch? Not so much. Their planned knowing wink to the audience as they attempt to “explain” (think mansplaining but in theatre form) what a musical is backfires spectacularly, thanks to the fact that they don’t seem to understand it themselves. That may sound harsh, especially given some of the strong shows some of the creative team worked on before but the fundamental flaws in this narrative structure sets Get Down Tonight up to fail from the beginning, making it nearly impossible for it to recover.

The thing is - there is nothing wrong with a bio-musical. Not all jukebox musicals need to be a bio-musical, of course, with musicals such as Mamma Mia! proving a classic songbook can be translated for the stage with a great story accompanying it. Rather than choose to fictionalise anything for Get Down Tonight, the writer has opted to offer select highlights from Casey’s life, presumably under his own instruction. The result is a confused affair that focuses too hard on small details from Casey’s life that don’t make for a captivating enough view, offering characters that are far too underwritten, underfleshed out and underutilised. The choice to skip over a large chunk of Casey’s life so that he goes from a struggling unknown to suddenly being a global superstar is one of the most perplexing and frustrating choices I have seen in all my years of theatre-going. If you are going to tell Casey’s story, we need to see more of it than Get Down Tonight offers. The focus here is all on the wrong elements, and while its intention to attempt something different than the norm is admirable in itself, there is a reason while other jukebox musicals thrive and this one sinks.

The writing in Get Down Tonight doesn’t flow naturally, with stilted dialogue and a story that jumps all over the place, making it hard to follow and harder to care. It only becomes clear the story is about Casey’s friendship group later in the show, but they have not been weighted enough individually or collectively to make this impactful enough. We never learn the importance of their reunions, or what bonded them altogether. The tone also proves inconsistent, with a very jarring segue into war stories, and elements of the story relating to Casey’s sexuality are incredibly poorly written. The whole book seemingly only exists to tie the songs together as tenuously as possible in a case of not so much shoehorning but hammering it in - the best example being “I like to do it with you” inserted with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The problem is the sequencing of the songs is all wrong, with too many ballads shoved together in the middle, and the bigger hits never getting the crowd-pleasing moments they deserve, until the finale, that is. The obvious comparison I found myself thinking during this was Viva Forever, but I’d argue even that featured better writing than this.

While the book is incredibly problematic in itself, the direction is equally to fault for the failure of this production. It is not slick in the slightest, with a production that feels poorly paced, despite its singular 90-minute runtime. This is evident by the time it ends suddenly, and pads out with an expected but perhaps overlong finale - admittedly the strongest part of the show, but it comes too little too late, and I did wonder if the choice to have the ensemble members in the aisles blocking the exit was a deliberate choice to prevent audience members from leaving early. Cast members squirting the audience with water pistols felt like something I’d see at a particularly low-rent pantomime somewhere, and really had no place in a musical like this. Where the creative team may have thought that was fun, I had another word beginning with F in my mind to describe it.

It felt like the undoubtedly talented cast had been given questionable notes in how to act on stage, leaving in awkwardness that left no chemistry, strange dynamics and a real lack of humanity - almost as if this show had been written by AI. By the time an ensemble member came on to the stage, sweeping the floor with a broom she inexplicably had been instructed to spin occasionally, promptly (and accidentally) breaking it in two, it felt like a fitting metaphor for the show I was watching. Watching an audience clap in moments they weren’t meant to, and not clap at the silences inserted after certain moments designed for applause, perfectly demonstrated the confusion and lack of understanding that prevented this show from connecting.

I don’t write one-star reviews lightly, and always look for some redeemable quality to bump it up to a second star, as I’m a great believer that all shows have something to offer and it is very rare that any show is deserving of this, the harshest of ratings. Sadly, I struggled to find anything redeemable to say this time, with lazy choreography and an incredibly lacklustre set design that did not feel good enough to be on this stage. Even the most overzealous and loud smoke machine couldn’t hide the shortcomings of this show. There was also a notable and overwhelming sense of low energy on that stage, which I attributed to the overall direction more than anything else. However, when all these elements are so poorly executed in themselves, it makes it pretty much impossible to make any sort of theatre magic.

That doesn’t stop the cast from trying, however, and this review is not a reflection on their talents at all. Ross Harmon has shown himself to be a fantastic performer in his own right, time and time again, and it is unfortunate he isn’t given the opportunity to demonstrate that this time, despite being front and centre. Weirdly not getting as many chances to sing as you would expect, the moments he does, he leaves me longing to see more from him - instead, he seems to solely exist to move the spotlight to the friends that come and go throughout the show.

These friends do prove some strong moments in themselves, with Paige Fenlon displaying some fantastic vocals on numbers ‘My Friend’ and ‘Please Don’t Go’, and Annabelle Terry getting a moment to shine as Gina with ‘Are You In His Arms Tonight’. These moments show what could have been achieved if the cast had been used a bit better, with stronger writing of their one-dimensional characters, and a clearer direction.

I take no joy in writing a review such as this, particularly when a show like Get Down Tonight should be used to create joy. However, in its current shape, that is nearly impossible to do. I wouldn’t be so put off by this review and tell anyone “Please don’t go” based on my own feelings as, of course, theatre is subjective and some will surely like it in its present form. I just struggled to find anything redeemable in this review, knowing it could be so much better. To do this, however, they really need to go back to the drawing board and give it a major shake shake shake up. The concept doesn’t work, the beats don’t hit, and the book and direction are both in dire need of a revisit. I’m not sure they need to completely give it up, as with the right people involved this could be a much more fitting tribute to the legacy of KC and the Sunshine Band, but when it came to me personally, this review sums up the way (uh huh uh huh) I didn’t like it.

Get Down Tonight: The KC and the Sunshine Band Musical plays at Charing Cross Theatre until 15th November. Tickets from https://allthatdazzles.londontheatredirect.com/musical/get-down-tonight-tickets 

Photos by Danny Kaan