Rock Follies review: An engaging, energised story about girl power

Based on the 70s ITV drama, the Rock Follies stage musical is as rough and ready as its inspiration. That’s a good thing. For fans like me, it’s a suitably brash blast of nostalgia for a TV show that was actually ahead of its time. For newcomers, it’s an engaging, energised story about girl power set two decades before the Spice Girls made that phrase their mantra.

Starring Rula Lenska, Charlotte Cornwell and Julie Covington, the telly version aired for two series in 1976 and 1977 and pulled in an amazing 15 million viewers each week. It’s now viewed as a cult classic but it was so popular it spawned two huge-selling albums, the first of which topped the UK charts and both of which featured compositions by none other than Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay. Russell T Davies calls it “my favourite show ever” and it would certainly have run for longer had it not been scuppered by contractual disputes.

It’s cheering, then, to see Rock Follies being given a new lease of life at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre with its feminist message (radical back then, somewhat expected now) intact. And Zizi Strallen (as Q), Carly Bawden (Anna) and Angela Marie Hurst (Dee) are every bit as good as Lenska, Cornwell and Covington as the girlbanders with attitude to spare.

This formidable trio from the Little Ladies (“it’s ironic”) after meeting at disastrous auditions for a West End show that, in a deliberately bad opening number, has flop written all over it. Instead they set their sights on a rock music career as “a fat finger to the male-dominated industry that objectifies women.”

It’s a bumpy ride. Gigs in shitty pubs where no-one is listening. Record execs who treat them like sex objects. Managers who want to change their style and their sound. An Alice Cooper-style glam rock icon who hires them, only to shove them in the background. These girls go through a lot but they’ve got balls.

Tropes that were original back in the 70s are cliches now but that’s part of the fun. Directed by Dominic Cooke, the show is retro in the best possible way, with the very catchy songs (by Mackay and Howard Schuman) given lo-fi arrangements and lots of wailing guitars.

There’s no scenery, just the clever use of equipment cases as furniture. The lighting is unfussily period-appropriate, the costumes rock-chick fabulous, the script peppered with zingers.

And our trio of not-so-little ladies are sensational. Hurst has a killer voice, Bawden displays a touching vulnerability and Strallen is hilarious as she downplays a sideline career in soft porn. The drama comes from the rows and rifts that develop as they realise this rock music lark isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But when they stand together with mics in hand, they’re invincible. Once their limited engagement at Chichester is finished, I demand an encore. 

Rock Follies is at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, until 26 August. Get tickets here