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Music Theatre A vibrant cast with a clear love of their subject matter

The power of Marley’s music comes into its own in a warts-and-all narrative which ably avoids hagiography, writes PETER MASON

Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical  
Lyric Theatre, London  

ALTHOUGH Get Up Stand Up! Is a jukebox musical, its creators have resisted the temptation merely to stitch together a few of Bob Marley’s best songs and let the melodies do the talking.   

Clint Dyer (director) and Lee Hall (book) could certainly have travelled down that route and got away with it, such is the power of the Tuff Gong’s repertoire.   

But by taking the project on to another level they’ve come up with a treatment of Marley’s life that gives almost as much weight to his message as to his music.  

Add to that a vibrant cast with a clear love of their subject matter and a commitment to the cause that goes well beyond the normal line of theatrical duty, and the result is a joyful portrait of an inspirational genius who — so the thrust of the production suggests — sent himself to an early death through his single-minded devotion to his art.   

Despite its obvious veneration of Marley, however, this is by no means a hagiography.  

One of its cleverest touches is to have some of Marley’s compositions aimed right back at him by other people, in a way that shines a light on his contradictions and failings.

No Woman No Cry, for instance, is sung to Bob with great power and defiance by Rita Marley (Gabrielle Brooks) as she reflects on his cavalier attitude to their marriage, while Waiting in Vain, delivered as an R’n’B ballad by girlfriend Cindy Breakspeare (Shanay Holmes), lays out Marley’s lack of commitment even to his extra-marital affairs.   

Elsewhere his songs are brought to bear with equally thoughtful application to the plot and moment — as when Rita and Bob render a touchingly romantic version of Is this Love at their first meeting.  

The chief fault lies in the dizzying number of scene changes necessitated by an unnecessarily desperate gallop through the main milestones of Marley’s life, some of which are covered so fleetingly that it’s difficult to keep up with what’s going on.   

But thankfully much of the frenzied and didactic biographical action is over by the end of the first half, leaving time after the interval for a slightly more reflective atmosphere that widens out to consider what Marley had to say about the world.  

It’s in that space that Arinzé Kene, in the lead role, is allowed to shine, and where some of the most moving scenes are able to develop. It’s also where the power of Marley’s music comes into its own.  
  
Until April 3 2022. Box office: 0330 333-4812, thelyrictheatre.co.uk.

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