THE idea for Monkee Business - The Musical came to writer Peter Benedict, he claims, when, in order to liven up a lengthy car journey with a bunch of theatricals, he randomly purchased a Monkees compilation CD and was surprised to find that "everyone, young and old, knew those songs". So a show built around said songs couldn't go wrong, right?
Well, wrong actually, in this case. Jukebox musicals are a pretty desperate proposition anyway, so far as this punter is concerned, but I'm prepared to grudgingly admit they can be fun if you really love the songs and simply want to sing along to a bunch of other people singing them.
This particular show seems especially clumsy when the real Monkees story is so remarkable that you couldn't make it up.
Tribute bands make their living from that and, astonishingly, several of them can fill arenas these days. When it comes to The Monkees, though, while people might well know and even love some of the songs much of the rest of their output isn't necessarily that familiar, as demonstrated by the slightly puzzled reactions at the world premiere night to the likes of ‘The Girl I Knew Somewhere’ and ‘What Am I Doing Hangin' Around.’
The fact these songs are shoehorned into a plot that treads a fine line between nonsensical and non-existent doesn't help either. After apparently miming to 'The Monkees Theme' to open the show and warm up the crowd (which I'd thought was a decent post-modernist gag, only to be sternly informed that the band really do sing live throughout!), Chuck (Ben Evans) Andy (Stephen Kirwan), Mark (Tom Parsons) and William (Oliver Saville) are improbably, and peremptorily, hoodwinked by not-at-all-stereotypical manager Joey Finkelstein (Linal Haft) into embarking on a world tour pretending to be original boy-band The Monkees, themselves a bunch of actors put together for a TV show.
All they have to do to pull this off, apparently, is to put on the outfits and make sure they stay a long way away from adoring fans, who, after all, would get to see the real Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork all the time on TV. So our good-hearted but apparently dim-witted heroes set off on a train from Clarksville, arriving at Pleasant Valley on a Sunday - you get the idea, I'm sure.
Later on, too much later on, there's even a jesting reference to this sort of crassness but, by then, the damage has been done, especially as by that time they've even resorted to nicking other bands' tunes, including The Beatles' ‘Back In The USSR’, when the band fly to Russia for some highly unlikely plot reason. This strikes me as a pretty expensive - and weak - gag, given how notoriously litigious Apple are. Or have I grossly underestimated the production and this is actually a convoluted Chuck Berry joke?
Somehow, I suspect not when the cartoonish Russian femme-fatale spy is dubbed Nikita Smirnoff (played with some relish by Michelle Bishop). Actually the supporting cast are all rather good, even when called upon to ignominiously play singing nuns (who really thought that squeezing Dominique into the plot was a hilarious idea, or that the younger audience members would recognise it anyway?) or lollipop ladies (ditto ‘My Boy Lollipop’).
There's nothing necessarily wrong with a musical's plotline being silly and anachronistic - just look at Hairspray. But the constant nudges and winks that these are innocent kids in those crazy Sixties, quickly gets tiresome here especially when we actually seem to be stuck in a Sixties that owes more than a little to the revisionist, and also not very funny, Austin Powers.
I don't want to get all music nerd here, and I understand that licensing rights would almost certainly put paid to any such thing, but this particular show seems especially clumsy when the real Monkees story is so remarkable that you couldn't make it up.
Put together at auditions in Los Angeles for a TV show designed to cash in on the huge US success of the Beatles (does this concept sound at all familiar?), Jones, the former star of Oliver; Mike Nesmith, the Texan bohemian; child-star Mickey Dolenz: and Peter Tork, the proto-hippie, turned into a bona-fide phenomenon, with an enormously successful TV show and huge hit records crafted by the finest songwriters and musicians money could buy.
Stephen Stills was just one of the many hopefuls turned down at that audition although, contrary to popular mythology, mass murderer Charles Manson wasn't. They toured with Jimi Hendrix, who was ignored by the screaming girls who just wanted to see The Monkees, then, famously, insisted on playing on their own records, and made Head, one of the druggiest films of all time.
Sounds like a great film or even stage show, doesn't it? But Monkee Business is not that show, says Benedict.
"This isn't about The Monkees, it's not the TV show extended to two hours and it's not the life story of the Monkees or their various members. This is about the music. I did actually start writing that Monkees story until I realised that it just wasn't a musical - it's very complicated and there'd be too much downbeat stuff in it," he admits.
"If people want the story of The Monkees they can read the various books. I'm writing a musical which has a story with the fun in it that you can't have if you're telling the real story."
Well, he's entitled to believe that and, to be fair, things do pick up in the second half, opening with a multinational medley of ‘The Monkees Theme’ and relying less on the songs to advance the plot.
This is the third show under the ‘Manchester Gets It First’ banner, after the hugely successful Ghost and Zach Braff's All New People. Obviously, it's a commendable initiative, and it was touching to dedicate the show to the late Davy Jones, especially with some of his family in the audience. But sorry guys, ‘Manchester Gets it First’ isn't and shouldn't mean simply a glorified dress rehearsal for a show that needs as much tightening, and livening up as does Monkee Business.
Monkee Business - The Musical is at the Opera House, Quay Street, until Saturday 14 April.
