The Drifter's Girl (Garrick Theatre, London)
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The Drifters were a feelgood fix for a generation growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, thanks to toe-tapping tunes such as Under The Boardwalk and Save The Last Dance For Me.
Now they’re back, in a musical tribute show starring Beverley Knight as Faye Treadwell, the gutsy young ‘girl’ of the title.
Treadwell managed The Drifters like a football club for nearly 50 years – first with husband George, then on her own after his death – until her retirement in 2001.
The quartet, loved for their bright, doo-wop harmonies, have boasted almost 40 members over the decades – the most famous being Ben E King.
The Drifters were a feelgood fix for a generation growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, thanks to toe-tapping tunes such as Under The Boardwalk and Save The Last Dance For Me. Now they're back in a musical tribute show at the Garrick Theatre
Faye and George held the hotly contested rights to the brand, and fought off attempts by some of those many, many former ‘Drifters’ to set up rival bands.
Relating her story here to her young daughter Tina, Faye describes how she pushed her way into the man’s world of music production, remembers her ten-year marriage to George and recounts the copyright disputes thereafter.
Knight’s solo songs, delivered in her rich, gospel warble, tell of Faye’s struggles as an Arkansas country girl with an accent like a banjo twang trying to cut it in the Big Apple.
There are lush variations on some of The Drifters’ lesser known numbers, from the tricky openers Follow Me and Harlem Child through a Tina Turner-ish treatment of Without You to the soulful lament of Nobody But Me – tied to George’s death in 1967.
But much as we sympathise with Treadwell’s
