Buddy, which ran for 12 and a half years in its original production at the Victoria Palace Theatre and subsequently the Strand (now the Novello), has been shrink-wrapped to fit the far tinier Duchess, where it is obviously now destined to become a West End fixture once again.
While one may bemoan the withdrawal of yet another small house from the West End landscape, which already has the St Martin’s and Fortune out of commission for new product, it is also a pragmatic act for a theatre owner who wants to keep the front of house lit.
This nostalgia fest remains an enduring crowd-pleaser. Though neither original - Alan Bleasdale got there first when he made a biographical play out of folding songs into Are You Lonesome Tonight? to tell the story of Elvis Presley’s life in 1985 - nor revelatory, co-writers Alan Janes and Rob Bettinson (who also directs) are hampered here by a life that was dramatic only for its sudden end.
Their attempts to make a play out of the life and career of Holly, whose first single was released in May 1957 but who was dead just over 18 months later, is mired in predictability as it dovetails in and out of recording studios and recreations of concerts at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and at Clear Lake, Iowa on the night he died.
There’s also a lot of padding with other non-Holly numbers folded in, with starring appearances for the Big Bopper (Lee Ormsby) and Ritchie Valens (Miguel Angel), who shared the stage with him at his final gig and then the light aircraft that crashed and killed them all.
But Bettinson’s youthful production, with many of the cast fresh out of drama school, brings an appropriate zest and vitality to the stage, and Matthew Wycliffe - who graduated from Arts Ed only last year - is engagingly attractive in the title role, in which he alternates with Dean Elliott. Among the accomplished actor-musicians that populate the rest of the company, Greg Last and Nick Sayce as Holly’s double bass player and drummer respectively steal the musical honours.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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