The Drifters Girl

Wales Millennium Centre and on tour.

Musicals based on bands should be a perfect formula. Bypassing the need to find a concept to link the songs to the story, as in say, Mama Mia, and instead using the band or singer’s own songs to tell their story. Perfect! It was an approach nearly perfected by Jersey Boys, and there’s a reason that show has gone on to world domination. The comparisons between that and The Drifters Girl are inevitable- similar era, setting and style of music. However, while Jersey Boys managed to weave together song and story, The Drifters Girl feels like a play punctuated by music. Or actually a tribute act interrupted by scenes. 

The latter feels like a shame because the musical performances are impeccable. The assembled ‘Drifters’ not only mimic the sound of the band admirably. The core performers, Miles Anthony Daley (George Treadwell), Ashford Campbell (Ben E King and Rudy Lewis), Daniel Haswell (Johnny Moore, Gerhart Thrasher) and Tarik Frimpong (Clyde McPhatter, Lover Patterson), give impeccable performances with nuanced differences between the Drifter they are portraying at a given time, it’s really a masterclass in vocal performance. The covers of songs such as Under the Boardwalk, Save the Last Dance for Me and Sweets for My Sweet allow the cast to show off their accomplished vocals and of course, appeal to the audience here to hear old favourites. There’s just enough reimagining for the stage to keep them faithful to the original but also offer a twist- or something for the non-Drifters fans too, or even to convert them. Each of them too, knows how to make it ‘theatrical’, something often missed in such musicals, so while they are performing a version of The Drifters, they’re all musically, giving it a theatrical spin to lend the songs to their new settings. Meanwhile, Carly Mercedes Dyer as Faye Treadwell is a one-woman masterclass of performance herself. Singing the roof off in her two big numbers, ‘Nobody But Me’ and ‘Harlem Child,’ she puts everything into them and leaves no doubt whose story this is. 

And it really is her story, Faye Treadwell’s story of managing one of the biggest groups of the era as a woman, a Black woman, and later single mom, is nothing short of remarkable. She is given some excellent lines and scenes too, not least being less than starstruck by the biggest singer of the era and also declaring ‘I answer nobody’s phone but my own.’ No doubt too the story is a testament to her achievements, and endurance. However it feels a little shortchanged by the book of the musical. The scenes are short and choppy, with often little time to mine any true depth in the characters. This is fine, works even, when we think of the ‘interchangeable’ Drifters themselves, we don’t need to get to know them. But Treadwell herself deserved more than the book gives her. The two key songs are her saving grace, allowing her to deliver perhaps the emotional performance that she is denied elsewhere. Meanwhile, though lacking in some ways, the short, choppy scenes are often witty, allowing Dyer to show off her impeccable comic timing. 

While the book then doesn’t dive deep enough to be truly emotionally satisfying for the Drifters Girl of the title, it is a cleverly constructed musical, with only the four Drifters actors, Dyer and one other actor (Jaydah Bell-Rickets as Treadwell’s daughter and narrator figure). The ‘interchangable’ Drifters becomes a clever theatrical device in which the actors play every other character in the piece. This varies from an array of comedy performances as barmaids, hotel attendants and, memorably Peter Paul and Mary. It’s chaotic, fun and a neat device to both tell the story and lean into the ‘replacable’ motif and ‘nobody knows who they are’ element of the story. 

It’s interesting, too, that the only women are Treadwell and her daughter (who helps drive the story by appearing as a kind of ‘from the future’ version of herself. Again, it’s a clever device that puts her at the centre of the Drifters’ universe, and, again, to extend the ‘revolving door’ and ‘replacing’ metaphor of the group, it cements that she is the constant, the irreplaceable. And that is a powerful message at the heart of the piece. 

While the book somewhat lets down the overall impact of the piece, there’s much to admire in The Drifters Girl's approach to storytelling. However, one missing component seems to be the link between song and story. It seems like the missing piece that, with a few exceptions- ‘Nobody But Me’ and the hauntingly beautiful interpretation of ‘In the Land of Make Believe’ too many of the songs feel like a mini concert rather than a musical theatre song. And while audiences here to hear their favourite songs clearly have no issue with that, it feels like a missed opportunity with such a catalogue of songs, to find a way to weave the emotion of the music- and the truly excellent performances- into the story being told rather than feeling like different strands of related stories.  

But the show delivers on its central elements: the music of The Drifters that audiences have come to hear, and the story of the woman behind them. It’s an array of powerhouse performances that while lacking in some areas of narrative, clearly deliver what audiences are there for. 

At Wales Millenium Centre until 11th May. Tickets here. 

On tour nationwide. Tickets and information here.