Stereophonic @ Duke of York’s Theatre, London

Excess, excess, excess. Trapped in a music studio for 3 hours, with beanbags, other ‘bags’, champagne, many, many herbal cigarettes, a fractious suddenly famous music group, wildly clashing patterns and one perfectionist musician. And one sound engineer tearing his hair out as the band (partly formed of two couples) create, prevaricate and tear into each other. 35 takes later for the one song…

It’s the 1970’s and this is sort of Fleetwood Mac and yet not. Stereophonic’s American-Brit soon to be super group feel the tension rising as one couple fractures in and out of love, due to addictions creating incredible tension. The other couple are in love and in love with music and creating, and yet one seeks endless validation from others, lacking confidence in their abilities, purpose and creativity, and the other has such perfectionist vision (and can play all the instruments) that can make life unbearable for sound engineers and time watching paint dry tedious for everyone else.

Impressively the cast sing, play their own instruments, feud and scamper around the stage in platform shoes and copious amounts of hair. The costuming is gorgeous as is the atmospheric prop placement — in orange, lime green, yellow and brown. We eavesdrop (like the sound engineers) on the band as they flit, stomp and stagger in and out of the music studio — and still the album isn’t finished. 3 years later….

With massive talents and even bigger ego’s, there’s a lot of clashing and humour, as the sound engineers sneakily treat the goings on as some kind of soap opera. There are some pertinent points made about the role of women in a misogynistic environment and the eternal Lizzie Siddall of question of being a talented woman and partner alongside creative men who get all the attention for their art, whilst you get the attention for being ‘the stunner’.

The writing is engaging as are the characters (even when they’re behaving appallingly) and humorous, even with jokes about the perfect drum kit set-up — and what happens when it goes wrong. Or how the band want the sound engineers to keep them on time and task — and then object vociferously when they do just that. There’s even a poetic monologue to a salad and how delightfully fresh it is! At the same time no-one is quite as they seem, though their secrets aren’t hidden for long in a music studio.

Overall with its copious alcohol consumption and hard and soft drug taking, the characters’ behaviours and impacts aren’t fully interrogated, beyond a partner’s lament and drawing a relational line in the sand. I’m thinking of the very public health destructive stories of big names of the ‘70’s such as Bowie or Clapton, and how they had to change or die. And those who sadly didn’t. Whilst concerns are raised at point, it’s all a bit of a joke, buried within the whirlwind of music making. Though the end is incredibly poignant as is the loss of female friendship and solidarity over who gets the record deal…and who doesn’t.

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