It’s 20 years since this ska-scored show about the Windrush generation opened at Stratford East, then became the first black British musical to transfer to the West End. Tinuke Craig’s revival is welcome and timely, given its account of postwar prejudice has cruel echoes in recent government policy.
The Big Life is a big-hearted, baggy piece of work, more joyful than breast-beating, with a bouncy score by Paul Joseph. It’s not subtle, but it’s damn good fun.
The script, by Paul Sirett and Tameka Empson (Kim Fox in EastEnders), is loosely based on Love’s Labour’s Lost. Four Caribbean men travelling hopefully to England – one of whom, Bernie, breaks up with his fiancée Sybil on board – decide to foreswear women, alcohol and cigarettes for a life of hard work and study.
On arrival, they’re greeted by cold weather, a mysterious practice called ‘queuing’, and rooming-house signs declaring: “No blacks, No Irish, no dogs.” So they end up down the hall from four women, including the aforementioned Sybil. Inevitable romances are wryly overseen by gossipy matron Mrs Aphrodite (Empson) from a box overlooking the action, and Admiral (Danny Bailey) a smooth busker who doubles as love-god Eros in one of many scenes set in Piccadilly Circus.
Actually the statue, the Standard’s logo, is of Anteros, the god of requited love: and the films advertised behind it on Jasmine Swan’s old-school set of painted flats – Thunderball and Dr Zhivago – were released 17 years after the Windrush docked at Tilbury in 1948. But let’s not quibble over details. The main pleasure here is the broadly comic misadventures of the men, observed with eye-rolling irony by the women.
There are adroit comic performances from Ashley Samuels as the male quartet’s leader, would-be academic Ferdy, and Khalid Daley as boisterous baker Dennis: in a cast full of sweet voices, they hit astonishing falsetto notes. Gabrielle Brooks brings her customary charisma and power to Sybil, a stenographer compelled to work as a washerwoman. Juliet Agnes supplies compassion as nurse Kathy, and oomph with the raunchy number Ain’t Nothing Hotter.
There isn’t a solid-gold ska classic in the score but London Song, backed by a recitation of bewildering tube station names, is very witty. The women’s anthems, That Man and Mada Faia Mada Pepa, are stronger than the all-male numbers. There’s a sweet lament, Whatever Happened, between Sybil and her estranged betrothed Bernie (Nathanael Campbell).
At over three hours long The Big Life could be a bit smaller. But it’s a fittingly crowd-pleasing tribute to Stratford’s former boss Philip Headley, who commissioned it and who died in January. And when Mrs Aphrodite reminds us that the invited Windrush immigrants came to Britain “with love and respect”, many of them to work for the NHS, you have to cheer.
Theatre Royal Stratford East, to 30 Mar; stratfordeast.com
