“Play On!” at Lyric Hammersmith

Mark Shenton in West London
3 February 2025

The opening line of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is “If music be the food of love, play on”, spoken by Duke Orsino. And the play features more songs than any other by Shakespeare, so it lends itself well to musical adaptation. This light, bright, and agile musical conceived by Sheldon Epps, with a book by Cheryl L. West, transposes Ilyria to jazz-age Harlem with music by Duke Ellington.

Cameron Bernard Jones as Rev.
Photo credit: Ciara Hillyer.

Shakespeare’s characters are gently mapped to nattily dressed 1940s equivalents, so the Duke (Earl Gregory) is a singer-songwriter who presides over the Cotton Club, the real-life Harlem fixture of the time. Viola – here re-named Vyman (Tsemaye Bob-Egbe) – disguises herself as a man in order to get her songs played at a time when female songwriters couldn’t break through. As in the intoxicatingly ahead-of-its-time Shakespeare, non-binary sexuality gives the show sting and surprise, but also some contemporary politics too.

It is, however, the other Duke that casts an even bigger spell over the proceedings: the jazz giant band leader Duke Ellington, some of whose greatest hits are folded into the narrative with wit and style.

Feste is Jester, the loose-limbed Llewellyn Jamal, who looks like a walking, talking, and dancing exclamation point. And Malvolio becomes Rev, sporting a bilious yellow zoot suit yet full of charisma in Cameron Bernard Jones’s vivid performance.

Koko Alexandra as Lady Liv.
Photo credit: Ciara Hillyer.

But you need not pay attention to the Shakespearean parallels to enjoy the show. You could simply bask in the glorious musicality of it all, with its endless parade of memorable numbers. They range from “Take the A Train” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” to “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If You Ain’t Got That Swing)”, “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good”, and ‘Hit Me with a Hot Note and Watch Me Bounce’.

They’re played with ferocious attack and verve by an onstage five-piece band led by Ashton Moore. And they are sung with relish by a company of splendid voices, including KoKo Alexandra as the Cotton Club’s leading diva Lady Liv, an Olivia-like figure (though it’s impossible for her to live up to the declaration made here that she’s better than Lena and Ella, but no matter – no one could easily live up to that kind of billing).

Talawa Artistic Director Michael Buffong’s zippy production – with agile choreography by Kenrick H20 Sandy – is a glowing sparkle of a show to brighten up the dark winter months. Only the rather modest ensemble (four men, five women) looks slightly awkward and underpowered.

But the overall exuberance of the piece wins the day, proving definitively that music is the food of love and also of the theatre. Briefly seen on Broadway in 1997, when it ran for barely two months, its rediscovery from obscurity now is welcome as the show completes a five-month tour at Lyric Hammersmith.