There is no doubting that The Bastard Sons of a Small Town Elvis is born of a deep affection for that once most revolutionary creation: rock 'n' roll.
Core to the show’s appeal are the four members of a great on-stage band who deliver the original score with easy musicianship. They are occasionally joined by the show’s writer and composer, Tim French, on vocals and guitar as the two former love interests of abandoned single-mum Brigitte (played by Kathryn Haywood), Lightning Johnny and, bewigged and re-costumed, as Johnny Heartbreaker.
The two aging rockers are playing at the same rock 'n' roll convention and Danny (Michael Gillett), supported by his best friend Billy (Niall Hemingway), is there too, Danny having received an out of the blue invitation from John, the father he has never known. Unexpectedly, Brigitte also turns up fearful for her son, Danny.
Subordinate to these busy goings-on is the meet-cute between Billy and chambermaid Lisa Marie (played by the show’s best singer, Milly Brann) and Frank the Bouncer (David Cramer), a character irregularly inserted as social commentator.
The multi-celled organism emerging from this primordial soup is made up of love, betrayal, commitment to one’s art, parenthood, mistaken identity, personal responsibility and of course a rock 'n' roll score.
Reminiscence is a recurring theme of the show with the storyline being re-enacted as flashbacks summoned up by Danny and Billy who also remember their own fatherless childhoods. Interspersed are Brigitte’s and her two boyfriends’ recollection of past events.
Memory could be a strong glue to hold the narratives together, but the book is the weakest link of this show.
Unlike the respectable score, French has bitten off more than he can chew here and needs to subcontract the rewrite to someone who can provide a tidier structure on which to hang the action within the existing framing device.
That book writer also needs to finesse and redistribute the dialogue more generally so that the actors have more to work with, whilst taking scissors to the rambling near-extemporised ‘woe, my broken heart’ speech of Danny’s father.
Most importantly, though, Johnny Heartbreaker’s ‘rock 'n' roll made me do it’ retro-justification for neglecting a brood of abandoned children and their mothers doesn’t wash and can’t be salvaged by good toe-tapping Elvis-pastiches alone.
There is a balance that needs to be found here between succumbing to rose-tinted nostalgia for a bygone age and stumbling through a more 'warts and all' story told in rock 'n' roll clichés.