Love and Death and Rock ’n’ Roll
I’ve had my ticket for Wilko: Love and Death and Rock ’n’ Roll for months, but I’ve been waiting years to see a show that lionises one of British music’s true icons, writes Michael Holland.
Doctor Feelgood were without a doubt a great band, but you mainly went to see Wilko Johnson when you bought tickets for one of their gigs because he created a rush in your body that you wanted to feel again and again.
Jonathan Maitland’s play opens with Wilko (Johnson Willis) proclaiming ‘Astrology is bollocks! You can’t see the future.’ He then shows off his astronomy knowledge by telling us that ‘Saturn is 547.6million miles away from Canvey Island’.
Canvey Island, a small town on reclaimed land in the Thames Estuary, takes pride of place in Wilko’s life. While many call Kent— on the other side of the Estuary— the Garden of England, he proudly adds, and Essex is the patio.
The story continues with his bully father dying and his snob mum trying to get him to sound his aitches, a torment that continues with his teachers at school. He and his friends form a skiffle band and Wilko meets the love of his life, Irene. They marry. He goes off to study literature at university. He graduates. He teaches literature. He gets the sack. I feel as if I’m on a whistle-stop tour through Wilko’s life, with no whistles and no stops. The musical interludes of Feelgood classics allow some respite from the ride and give a reminder of how good they were.
Another band is put together— Doctor Feelgood. With Wilko writing the songs to get away from merely being another cover band, they begin to get noticed, but Wilko is argumentative and uncompromising. With his degree and his narcissism, he feels superior to just about anyone he meets, and it does little for band cohesion. He puts the others down, telling lead singer Lee Brilleaux that he has no talent, when, in fact, he was one of the best front men around. Wilko leaves and drops into a musical doldrums while the band continue to have more success.
Adding more pain to an existence increasingly lived with drugs, Wilko his diagnosed with terminal cancer. He decides not to undergo deblitiating treament but to live his final months saying goodbye on a farewell tour. The first half ends on a melancholy note.
We spend the interval raving at how good the band are, with much praise saved for Jon House’s Lee Brilleaux and David John’s skill at playing the spoons.
The writer has got right inside the mind of Wilko Johnson, and the actor has too. Johnson Willis makes Wilko real. he ensures we do not see him as some obnoxious, druggie boor but an educated man who quotes from Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot, Joseph Conrad and William Blake; who connects Shakespeare’s Sonnets to rock ’n’ roll songs, and deals with life-ending cancer with a spirit and outlook we could all do with.
Georgina Fairbanks(Irene), Georgina Field (Sparko) make up the cast that deliver a great story and fantastic music. And it is the music that makes me overlook the too many facts being dropped into the script like confetti.
The second half ends with smiles all round, a three-song finale and an appearance from Charlie Chan, the man who made a miracle happen.
Go and find out how that miracle happens.
Southwark Playhouse Borough, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London, SE1 6BD until 19th April.
Booking and full details: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/wilko/
