Tonight's The Night
Tonight's The Night
Playhouse, Edinburgh
Neil Cooper
When gravel-voiced blues singer Rod Stewart sold his soul for a life of pop excess accompanied by a roll-call of ever-blonder accessories, it's unlikely that the devil made him do it.
That's exactly what happens, however, to Stuart, the geeky hero of Ben Elton's jukebox musical of Rod the Mod's hits which has been on the go for a decade now.
Stuart works in a garage in Detroit, where he fawns over the equally bookish Mary. An intervention by a peroxided Satan not only gives Stuart the confidence and star quality of his namesake, but his promiscuous proclivities as well.
Taken under the wing of archetypal rock chick Baby Jane, Stuart and his new band blaze a trail to the top, but there's a little part of Stuart that's always the nice guy.
If all this sounds ever so slightly ridiculous, bear in mind that Elton probably knows his Goethe and his Marlowe as well as Peter Cook and Dudley Moore did when they reimagined their swinging sixties take on Faust in Bedazzled. In terms of the sort of rock and roll mythology depicted here, Elton will have also been fully versed in Robert Johnson and the Rolling Stones.
The parade of big-haired blondes, black leather pants and hot legs galore probably matter more in Caroline Jay Ranger's slickly one-dimensional production, and the big voices of Ben Heathcote's Stuart, Jenna Lee-James's Mary, Jade Ewen's Dee Dee and Tiffany Graves's dual turn as Satan and Baby Jane even more so.
Michael McKell hams things up deliciously as Stoner in a somewhat dated looking music business parable which at its best remains a thrustingly infectious romp.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article