Musical treat lacks decent storyline

Dreamboats and Miniskirts, Palace, Manchester, to Saturday

It has to be admitted — especially since the Sixties was when I first became really aware of pop music — that there really were some amazing songs around back then.

Some complete tosh too, of course, but luckily very few of those get on to the playlist of Bill Kenwright’s latest jukebox show, already accompanied by compilation CDs no doubt available in the Palace foyer.

Sadly the songs aren’t the only thing on the jukebox for this sequel to the musical of the CD compilation “Dreamboats and Petticoats”, which started life in record stores and became a stage show (and half a dozen more compilation CDs).

The show once again has a book by TV sitcom writers Marks and Gran, and once again they exhibit a complete lack — pretty much as in their TV shows — of any interest in character or reality. Their performers inhabit a strange world of late teenage years in which one minute they are bands with contracts and number one hits and the next are back playing at the local youth club.

It’s as if the writers bought a couple of books: one of Sixties pop culture, the other of Sixties pop, and wrote scenes to add the latter to the former without worrying too much if it made a lot of sense — provided it had sufficient boy-meets-girl-loses-girl-gets-girl-back punch for the audience to latch on to.

Which is one way of saying enjoy the music, because you won’t come out having laughed, cried or been made to feel warm and fuzzy by the story, about a small-time band becoming famous.

The music, though, really is something else, from the Beatles through the Beach Boys and Dusty Springfield to Roy Orbison, Neil Sedaka and less-well-known tracks from Lesley Gore and others, almost 40 of them, well played by the onstage band and sung by the sizeable pool of actors.

As far as the performers go, it seems most were chosen for their playing and singing abilities rather than their acting, for allied to the script the characters they draw are two-dimensional at best.

But Alex Beaumont and Elizabeth Carter, Alastair Hill and Louise Olley and David Luke and Anna Campkin are, like the rest of the company, generally easy on the ear.