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Get Up, Stand Up!
Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue
Rating: 
The story of Bob Marley has long been crying out to be made into a stage show. Now at last, 40 years since the great man died, he's finally set Shaftesbury Avenue throbbing with his deep reggae beats.
But, much as I love Marley and his music, this version, written by Lee Hall (best known for the Billy Elliot and Rocketman screenplays) left me slightly cold and faintly baffled.
And yet it's such a great story...
Born Robert Nesta Marley in 1945, he rose from the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, abandoned first by his white father and then by his black mother, only to assert himself in the rigged music scene of his country – before literally getting caught in the crossfire of political feuds in the 1970s.
Star turns: Arinze Kene is an energetic Bob Marley. Kene has a luminous smile, an energetic stage presence and a wonderful, soulful voice which he pours into a rousing solo rendition of Redemption Song
All that and more is wedged into Hall's plot without shedding much light on any of it or gathering much dramatic momentum in the process. At times (God forbid) it's even a tiny bit dull.
Does it matter, though? Maybe not. There's always the music and, in Arinze Kene, they have an energetic, boyish, passionate and charismatic embodiment of Bob, a man driven by strong Rastafarian beliefs.
