Dreamboats and Petticoats or The Music Strikes Back

By Graham Cleverley

George Lucas might have called it The Music Strikes Back. Over two hours of virtually continuous and pretty well pure rock’n’roll of the kind that got lost somewhere in the middle sixties and mutated into rock of varying degrees of hardness and brands of metallurgy, brought back to life. All of it fitting into, and annotating the progress of, a minuscule plot of the boy led astray by the bad girl (albeit with the heart of gold) but returning to overlooked girl next door tradition – a plot of even more antique vintage and similar simplicity to the music itself. What one might describe therefore as a four-chord plot.

Do-do-ron-ron….

I am talking, I should perhaps have said, of the touring production of Dreamboats and Petticoats, the hit West End musical that reached Luxembourg this week at the Grand Théâtre, much to the enjoyment of the audience and myself. Set in 1961 among the members of an English youth club who are unusually inept at table tennis but impressively talented as dancers and musicians, it tells the story of Bobby and Norman and Sue and Laura. Bobby and Norman both want to be rock’n’roll singers, but since Bobby wears a blazer and has all the charisma of a young Terry Scott crossed with a glassless Buddy Holly, while Norman wears leather and has been working on an Elvis imitation, Norman wins the audition to sing with the club’s group.

Dum-dum-dum-dum….

In the long run however it has to be heavy odds on Bobby. After all, the song list includes Bobby’s Girl, and Tell Laura I Love Her, as well as Runaround Sue, whereas Norman alone has no song clue. Moreover Bobby is somewhat of a nerd (though the subspecies had not been named in 1961) and, as everyone knows, in the end it’s the nerds that get to write the histories and declare the winners. And finally, Bob is evidently mod material whereas Norman is typically rocker, and on the whole mods got the best press in the era. (The more violent aspects of mod-rocker relations are only hinted at by one fight between them, symbolically enough at Southend).

So no bookie is going to take bets on Bobby and Laura ending up hand in hand – or even that they end up on the programme Thank Your Lucky Stars with rather more glitz than Keith Fordyce would ever have dreamed of, let alone budgeted for.

Woah-oh-Oah-oh-Woh

But no matter. Just about every other line of the dialogue is a cue for the actors to shed their characters, and pick up their instruments and play or sing or dance - or any two of three simultaneously: one admirably and impressively spends much of the night dancing while playing a baritone sax. Ten of the seventeen in the cast double as instrumentalists in the programme and even the drummer gets a speaking part (contrary to the convention that “the drummer never speaks”) in celebrating Laura’s 16th birthday. If that isn’t unique it is certainly rare, and one wonders what accommodations were made with the various unions involved.

Which is itself perhaps a concern that doesn’t arise in the modern world, no matter how it may have plagued Britain in 1961. Other contemporary plagues are mentioned – at least Max Bygraves is and so is national service, which Bobby would have been just too young to have to serve. Other less ominous references are pleasing to those who remember them and presumably slip by unnoticed by those who don’t – Sunday Night at the London Palladium?

In general therefore a night of pleasant nostalgia, and maybe one that will put an end to the myth that the 1950s were a depressing and grey period. It’s worth noting today that the major choice facing teenagers was whether to stay on at school or just take one of the many jobs available. At the time, “what job do I want and when?” was the paramount question. “How can I get a job?” was not a concern.

I have nothing but praise for the show and the performers-actors-singers-dancers-musicians. They prove beyond doubt that despite Don McClean, the music didn’t die in 1959.

Doo-doo, doo-doo….

Given the size of the Dreamboats hit, I wonder if a prequel might not be in order. If this show proves there was music before the Beatles, there was also music before Holly. Even before Haley and Presley. (Why no Haley and Presley material in the song list? There’s a Johnny Ray).

If so and if anyone out there is already looking for a plot about a teenage pianist in a youth band in a South Coast town playing for jive and sambas and quicksteps and so on in the late ‘40s/ early ‘50s … well let me just say I could suggest a name to put on the cheque.

Doo-wop.