I do wonder when the West End will realise that it has, quite simply, tried audiences’ patience enough. To pay £65, plus £2.50 booking fee – or £82.50 if you’re feeling flush enough for premium prices – for a stalls seat in a dilapidated theatre for this grimly mediocre musical, then to spend the entire interval queuing for one of just five ladies loos in the building (and a mere two for the whole of the stalls), only to find that neither the taps nor the hand drier work properly: why would anyone be in a rush to repeat an experience of this sort?
The Small Faces are one of the lesser-known British bands of the 1960s and are destined to remain exactly that if All or Nothing gets its way. Written, produced, directed by and starring Carol Harrison, it’s a long and lazy trudge through the band’s beginning, middle and unclear end. The pedestrian script peddles cliché – ‘Fame: a destroyer in so many ways’; ‘That boy is drawn to danger like a moth to a flame’ – and makes the whole thing seem like just another generic rock and roll tragedy. How we long for some of the panache of skilful Kinks musical Sunny Afternoon.
Steve Mariott is the chirpy, chippy Cockney driving force behind the group and we get not one but two Steves to steer us through the many repetitive scenes: young Steve (Samuel Pope) fizzes with ambition if not business acumen and older Steve (Chris Simmons) is our narrator. This older role could be so much more sharply pointed to provide a rueful commentary on the impetuosity of youth. Harrison plays Steve’s mother Kay, a part that doesn’t make it into two dimensions, let alone three.
It’s a long time before the group – those who are not Steve are under-characterised, to say the least – is allowed to let rip with the music. Those enduring hits Itchycoo Park and Lazy Sunday are appealingly performed, but it would have been pleasant to hear more of them. Instead, it’s a gruelling and derivative plod through differing artistic ambitions and bad management.
Even after what felt like hours of this, I still couldn’t tell you the names of three out of the four members of the group.
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