REASONS to be tearful can be found in Zinnie Harris's (The Fall Of) The Master Builder downstairs in The Quarry but sex and drugs and rock and roll and much more besides are all Reasons To Be Cheerful in The Courtyard.
Graeae, the company that brings out the ability in "disability", are marking September 30's 40th anniversary of Ian Dury's iconoclastic album New Boots And Panties by reviving Paul Sirett's abrasive, raucous, anarchic musical named after Dury's list-making number three hit.
Like The Kinks, Buddy Holly, The Small Faces, Queen, Madness, ABBA and Meatloaf musicals, the show is built around the iconic songs, but while Dury once had a compilation called Jukebox Dury, this is not a mere jukebox musical.
Dury suffered from polio, always making his stage entrance with the aid of a stick and writing Spasticus Autisticus, a frank song that so discomfited the BBC powers that it was banned, only to be cheered to the rafters at the Playhouse, and it is this spirit of the late Dury that Graeae's diverse cast embraces.
Set inside the Red Lion pub in The Big Smoke, on the road and on the coast, the story revolves around Billy Fisher-style dreamer Vinnie (Stephen Lloyd, on crutches after a tumble) and anarchist best mate Colin (Stephen Collins) trying to acquire tickets for an Ian Dury & The Blockheads gig for themselves and Vinnie's cancer-stricken dad (Gerard McDermott).
John Kelly's Blockheads-loving John takes most of the tongue-twisting lead vocals on all those familiar Dury latter-day music-hall songs and Beth Hinton-Lever and Max Runham are terrific too in Jenny Sealey's vibrant production, where sign language, Dury's witty, worldly-wise, saucy lyrics on the screen, splendid video projections, bags of unruly energy and fantastic playing in the funk and fury style of the Blockheads combine so thrillingly.
The mood is one of celebration of the vaudevillian Dury, but anger too aimed at figures of authority from Margaret Thatcher to Theresa May. With reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three and plenty more, don't get back into bed until you have seen this exhilarating show of defiance.
Reasons To Be Cheerful, Graeae Theatre Company, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight at 7.30pm; tomorrow, 2pm and 7.30pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk
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