Exposure - The Musical - review, St James Theatre

Picture a musical that begins with a father dying in Africa as his son is born in London. This is depicted in Exposure by the father singing front-of-stage as, behind him, from the middle of a projected baby scan, steps a bloke built like England rugby captain Dylan Hartley, naked but for a pair of baggy draws. My companion couldn't stop laughing. It didn't help that when they moved from unlikely song to stilted speech, the script had the sophistication of a primary school nativity play. Exposure is a dog's breakfast of a musical. Has it potential, however, to become the dog's bollocks?

The story of little Jimmy Tucker's rise from zero to... zero, is hackneyed and unconvincing, yet we remained glued to our seats and thoroughly engaged. How can anyone resist a plot that encompasses the father-son relationship, a pact with Mephistopheles, African voodoo, the corruption of the music scene, the sentimentalisation of poverty, and the paparazzi. Exposure exposes it all.  If that sounds confusing, it is, but we were lucky to be sitting alongside a portly bruiser with a slurpie who  spent the entire two hours pointing at the stage explaining the doings in a loud voice to the woman next to him.

The cast brims with energy - the lead this evening was understudied well by Andy Barke - but struggles with mundane dialogue and dated allusions. We get  early Princess Di, Che Guevara, David Bailey, the News of the World... Writer, Mike Dyer, has created a score as random as his storyline.  Exposure encompasses Lion King type sweeps, jazzy runs, a touch of Irish, and a clutch of reprises. What Kind of Son, Rainmaker, and Straight from the Heart, stay in the head. The only consistent marker in Phil Willmott's production is the fantastic photographic set. Created by Timothy Bird, it is alive with strong and iconic images that visually maintain the story at the heart of Exposure while the action is all over the place. That is that Jimmy, like his prize-winning father, is a photographer struggling with the morality of cataloguing other people's lives.


In conclusion: The St James has a fabulously good bar. Tonight, it was desultory. The only food on offer was sarnies, brought in from a local cafe. Change is afoot since the theatre's purchase by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. It would be great if he'd take his team off the menus and get them onto the production. Some intensive revising could get Exposure over the line from weird and not particularly good, to weird with cult status.

References
Exposure, The Musical, Tickets

St James Theatre, Palace Street, Victoria, London SW1.   Run ends August 27