The Harder They Come @ the Barbican.

"The Harder They Come doesn't have an amazing screenplay, but it floats by on the strength of its other qualities." A terrific entry on the film from Matthew Dessem, via the cinetrix.

Meantime: "How often do you see dancing in the aisles at the Barbican?" asks Lyn Gardner in the Guardian. "It happens during this Theatre Royal Stratford East transfer of Perry Henzell's stage version of the cult 1972 movie about country boy Ivan who arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, with dreams of making it in the hit parade and ends up riddled with bullets."

"Does the show overglamorise Rolan Bell's Ivan, who comes to make his fortune in Kingston, gets into drug pushing and shoots dead two cops before he's inadvertently betrayed by his girl Elsa and is himself killed in his shanty town hideaway?" asks Benedict Nightingale in the London Times. Given our thriving British gun culture, especially in the East End of London, that could be a worry. But no, you don't object when you're watching Kerry Michael's ebullient production. As it proceeds to suggest, you might as well damn Robin Hood for resisting King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham."

"All around me, people seemed to be having a fantastic time, but whenever the admittedly terrific music and dancing stopped, I found myself becoming bored and fractious," writes Charles Spencer in the Telegraph.

Posted by dwhudson at March 20, 2008 8:48 AM