The competition is still on for worst jukebox musical ever, and—guess what!—another competitor has just entered. It’s the Paper Mill Playhouse’s very own invasion by My Very Own British Invasion, and it’s a honey, run-up by bookwriter Rick Elice on the instigation of Herman’s Hermits lead singer Peter Noone’s “idea.”
The stage attack is a version of an earnest love affair Noone sought when he was “15 going on 16” and suddenly hitting the charts. He had his eyes—and in this version, his groin—on a somewhat older tempest-in-a-Cottage-Wear-teapot who was simultaneously being courted by a more famous, sexier, and sexist rock superstar.
Apparently, Noone had the notion to memorialize this part of his past but all the same gave bookwriter Elice license to use the facts as he chose along with the freedom to include not only Herman’s Hermits jukebox hits but anything he liked from the other 1960s Brit invaders—27 ditties, as it turns out.
Though Elice, whose book for this season’s Cher is also no big deal, may have had the license, he doesn’t present My Very Own British Invasion as if he has a firm grip on the wheel. Whereas the strikingly blond Noone (played by the dark-haired Jonny Amies) reports that his crush on the here-named Pamela (Erika Olsen) was strictly kept to himself, Elice imagines a competition between him and the strutting superstar, here-named Trip (Conor Ryan, so terrific in the recent Desperate Measures and again a cluster of firecrackers.)
The struggle for Pamela’s hand and other parts of her dynamic body has her avoiding the boys by touring the United States and unfortunately getting caught up in drug abuse. Not to be put off by her lamming it, the rock ‘n’ roll swains embark on their own United States invasion—Trip dragging along a bruiser called The Hammer (Daniel Stewart Sherman) to threaten tiny but game Peter. Eventually, the three wooers end up back in England, where Pamela makes her final choice.
Her decision won’t be revealed here, not so much to avoid a spoiler as to acknowledge that few watching will have already guessed the decision she makes between a callow youth (Noone is 19 when the plot quits) and a major international singer-songwriter, whom Elice depicts as someone who these days might be a #MeToo target.
(It’s not difficult to figure out the real people behind Pamela and Trip. The Paper Mill Playhouse provides a hint-hint-hint by featuring Maryann Faithfull CDs at the merchandise counter. It’s only a mental hop-skip-and-jump to Mick Jagger, who could be a doofus in those Carnaby Street days but was, with his London School of Economics background, shrewd enough to become one of rock music’s shrewdest businessmen. No airhead he. Certainly not when he co-wrote with Keith Richards “As Tears Go By” for Faithfull.)
In large part My Very Own British Invasion is, of course, an excuse to get those 27 songs reprised. They’re dispensed as flashbacks in Noone’s life on a set meant to represent a beloved Soho hang-out for incipient rock greats. It was the Bag O’ Nails (a bastardization of the word bacchanalia). Whether David Rockwell’s replica is accurate will be only clear to the joint’s patrons, whichever of them are left.
Now for credit where due: Two-and-a-half of the numbers are outstanding. Olsen and Kyle Taylor Parker as Bag O’ Nails owner Geno go to town on “The House of the Rising Sun.” Amies and Olsen deliver a charming version—with chorus adding in—of “There’s a Kind of Hush (All Over the World),” which has an equally charming ending guitar chord gesture. (This may be the place to note that Herman’s Hermits disseminated what wasn’t yet categorized as soft rock, a groove at which Noone evidently balked.) The half-outstanding vocal turn occurs when Trip declares sincere love for Pamela. Conor sings “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” once through with genuine passion but then goes Jagger-like to a mic so’s to torture a second go-round.
The cliché Trip reversal is a mark of the way in which director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell regards this assignment as requiring almost constant references to 1960s movement crazes like the frug and the watusi. Excepting the three above-mentioned exceptions, the action at the revered Bag O’ Nails gets to look like an empty bag o’ Mitchell tricks, sleight-of-hand intended to make My Very Own British Invasion seem much more genuine that it is. (Broadway’s so-so Pretty Woman is Mitchell’s earlier entry this Broadway season. Kinky Boots, now in its final weeks, is a much better example of his craftsmanship.)
Yes, My Very Own British Invasion boasts much stand-out singing—Amies, Olsen, Ryan, Parker leading the way—but pipe up as the cast members can and do, the result resembles nothing so much as a rusty, aging jukebox.
My Very Own British Invasion opened on February 10, 2019, at the Paper Mill Playhouse and runs through March 3. Ticket and information: papermill.org
