Cliff - The Musical
Prince of Wales Theatre 2003

First thing to know . . . Calling this a musical is stretching it a bit. Cliff is more a revue, a hodgepodge of some of the 124 Top 40 hits racked up over a mind-boggling six decades by Britain's very own Peter Pan of pop, Cliff Richard.

Second . . . Cliff is not really about Cliff. It's more about its creator, Britain's very own Peter Pan of radio broadcasting, DJ Mike Read, who happens to be a close mate and tennis partner of Cliff's and who, having a similar hair-do, handily happens to take the show's star role.

Third . . . If you are unaware of the momentous part Sir Cliff has played in the development of the modern face of Britain, then a brief pundit's view may be of use here in assessing the show's visit-worthiness. Widely touted as these islands' answer to Elvis (every nation probably had one), the mellow-voiced singer leapt into the charts in 1958 and has rarely been out of them since. Though he notoriously turned to Christianity while the drug-addled Beatles were turning on the rest of the nation, and most radio stations now refuse to air his saccarine tunes, none of this stopped him from gaining the prized Millennium No 1 slot in 1999 with a saccarine version of the Lord's Prayer played to Auld Lang Syne (which, sinfully, doesn't even scan).

So what do you get for your money? A string of hits linked by a bumbling Read pretending to be an 80-year-old Cliff in the future looking back on his life, pretending to be funny and pretending to sing. He's joined by three other Cliffs of various ages, none of whom resemble His Cliffness let alone each other (and the two younger singers appear to only do Elvis impressions). No, that's a little harsh: leading tribute artist Jimmy Jemain does a more than passable Cliff visually and, more crucially, sings most of his repertoire admirably.

Still, the entire shebang reeks of sheer laziness, secure in the knowledge that the fans will pay regardless and there is no more than a nod towards the basic standards of stagecraft the rest of us would expect. The characters are cardboard-thin and the songs aren't even played in order, thus robbing the chance of even a half-decent nostalgia-fest. So there really is little here designed to attract other theatregoers.

Cliff Richard has made a career out of confounding the critics - he memorably defied popular taste in the nineties with Heathcliff, a West End musical starring himself that was roundly slated yet sold out thanks to his devoted and huge fan base (a sort of Kiss Army with family values). Now it's being done on his behalf and so will prove to be as winning a formula without him.

Nick Awde

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Review - Cliff the Musical - Prince of Wales 2003