There’s a fittingly lo-fi, “let’s do the show right here” vibe to this charming musical. It’s adapted from John Carney’s 2016 film about a teenager putting a band together to impress a girl in the depressed, god-bothered Dublin of 1985. A talented young ensemble of multi-instrumentalist actors – many of them recent graduates or still in education – is led by Sheridan Townsley, making a charismatic stage debut as our hero Conor.
The dialogue, characters and scenarios of the movie have been tweaked and in some cases coarsened in Enda Walsh’s stage script. But the new and original 80s-style pop songs – by Carney and Gary Clark, who also does the orchestration and arrangement here – are irresistibly catchy and uplifting. And Rebecca Taichman’s staging has an exuberant energy all its own.
