BLUES BROTHER SOUL SISTERS

BRISTOL OLD VIC

Every so often those of us in the benighted provinces get a little taste of the theatrical fare that London folk have been enjoying for 'many successful years'. With loud fanfares and enough advance publicity material to deforest several small Scandinavian countries, the Big Musical rolls into town. Thin on plot, with dodgy acting and an even dodgier script, it travels on the crest of the nostalgia wave, bringing foot-tapping hits of yesteryear to the culture-starved masses.

Now Bristol has decided that if London can do it, then we can do it too. Yet one would hope that the city could improve on the format. After all, it was the 'Bristol Sound' that shook up the music business and restored craftsmanship and intelligence to an industry which had tumbled into candyfloss and composing by numbers. At the same time, Bristol Old Vic has a well-earned reputation for producing exciting theatre, particularly for the young and black audiences ignored by most other venues. Blues Brother Soul Sisters offered the promise of an entertaining show which also incorporated some stylish theatre, reshaping the stale format of the 'hits of the past' musical in the searing heat of Bristol's late-Nineties creative boom.

Unfortunately, it was born with the words 'West End material' scrawled all over it. This is a play (in the loosest sense of the term) with production numbers, a mutant spawning of theatre and gig. The gig part soon gains the upper hand; theatre audiences don't usually dance in the aisles and whoop. The plot has the requisite flimsiness - tribute singer Rufus wants to do 60s soul, his backing singers rebel and they end up doing 70s soul too, end of plot - and as a theatrical experience, Blues Brother Soul Sisters is the equivalent of discovering that the only food you're going to get in a restaurant is the breadsticks.

It's funky, it's loud - oh boy is it loud - and it taps straight into the current love of all things Seventies. But its dialogue is stale, and the insights it gives into either the struggles of being in a tribute band or being black in Britain today are minimal and quickly swept aside in order to squeeze in another soul classic.

With a plot which will never shift your brain out of first gear and a score which will keep your feet tapping in fourth, Blues Brother Soul Sisters is exactly what you would expect it to be. Which is both its strength and its weakness. But as the ringing in the ears wears off, a couple of niggling questions remain. Why does a creative powerhouse like Bristol Old Vic have to stage something which, although it has all the makings of a new hit musical, is hardly on the cutting edge of anything very much? And why is this funfest not being funded by one of the commercial theatres who always manage to find the cash to stage the seventeenth retread of Buddy, and who will probably be showing Blues Brother Soul Sisters with glee on its post-West End nation-wide tour?

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE