John Byrne is not a playwright you associate with jukebox musicals. The Slab Boys author – who, as a painter, is being celebrated in a retrospective at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove – has always had the popular touch. In his TV series Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin’ Heart, he also made much of his love of popular song. But he has never before placed music as centrally as it is in Underwood Lane.
Andy Arnold’s full-throttle production is not billed as such, but the jukebox musical is the form it most closely resembles. It is not only that it takes its name from the Paisley street where Byrne’s teenage pal Gerry Rafferty grew up before he found fame with Baker Street and Stuck in the Middle With You. It is also that, in its breezy tale of a 60s skiffle band skirting round the fringes of the big time, it has the same lightly plotted air as many a singalong crowdpleaser.
