Theatre in Review: Good Vibrations (Lyric Theatre, Belfast/Irish Arts Center)

	Glen Wallace (foreground). Behind, left to right Jayne Wisener, Cat Barter, Darren Franklin. Photo: Nir Arieli

The pop bio-musical appears to be headed backstage and maybe that's a good thing. We've had dozens of shows, from Jersey Boys to A Beautiful Noise, about the sheer hell of being rich, famous, and the possessor of multiple platinum records, a concept that has worn perilously thin. (As Noël Coward once noted, "Let's hope we have no worse to plague us/Than two shows a night in Las Vegas.") Now the focus is shifting to the behind-the-scenes personalities who acted as catalysts, helping to foment musical revolutions. Opening Off Broadway tonight is Rock and Roll Man, about the payola scandal-plagued disk jockey Alan Freed. Beating it to the punch is Good Vibrations, which pays tribute to Terri Hooley, the "godfather of Belfast punk." In the latter case, the vibrations are very good indeed.

Based on a 2013 film that was much lauded in Ireland but little seen elsewhere, Good Vibrations establishes punk rock, the Belfast version, not as an expression of burn-it-all-down fury but as an energetic rejection of Northern Ireland's toxic Catholic-versus-Protestant binary. ("Nihilism?" sniffs a record executive introduced to the Belfast sound. "If anything, it sounds like they're having too good a time.") Terri, the son of a non-religious, socialist household, cherishes the ideal of a bohemian environment dedicated to creative expression, a dream that evaporates as murderous sectarian lines are drawn in the early 1970s. Working as a DJ, he strives to introduce pub-goers to his wildly eclectic tastes, which include Jamaican dub and vintage girl groups like the Shangri-Las. But, faced with random bomb attacks and militias roaming the streets, people are afraid to be out at night. "This is missionary work," Terri says. "Missions draw bigger crowds," says his soon-to-be girlfriend, Ruth.

Undaunted, Terri opens a record store -- remember them? -- as part of a collective, created with friends, that includes a food shop and a "people's printing press." Intended as an oasis in a violent world, it's a risky proposition, what with thugs of both faiths running protection rackets -- Terri daringly refuses to pay off either side -- and a cop on the beat constantly sniffing around for drugs. And, in its early days, the shop doesn't even draw flies. Then Terri discovers punk, for him the musical equivalent of smack. Jazzed on its liberating energy, the bird it flips to conventional pieties, he is determined to spread the word. Soon he is producing concerts, then records, transforming a diffuse musical scene into something like a movement. Triumph comes when a disc by one of his acts, The Undertones, is played on air, twice in a row, by the influential BBC radio broadcaster John Peel.

Its unusual milieu and background of religious strife don't entirely rescue Good Vibrations from the predictability of its show-business rise-and-fall format. You can see the demise of Terri and Ruth's marriage coming only too clearly, especially after he forgoes the birth of his daughter for a Siouxsie and the Banshees concert. The show also telegraphs Terri's heavy use of drugs and liquor, which contribute to the shambolic business practices that drive him to the edge of ruin. As his friend Dave notes, "Being radical doesn't preclude being competent," words that Terri all-too-willfully ignores.

But Colin Carberry and Glenn Patterson's book, based on their screenplay, is filled with observations that make one sit up and pay attention, often because the stakes are so nerve-wrackingly high. Terri has only one working eye thanks to a boyhood encounter with street toughs who brand him a "Fenian lover." Returning to Belfast from a tour, Terri and The Undertones are stopped by gun-wielding soldiers, one of whom queries, "You telling me some of these fuckers are Catholic and some are Protestant?" "It never occurred to me to ask," Terri replies. (Warned by the soldiers about violence in the streets, they park themselves on a nearby hill and watch the city burn.) And as the political landscape darkens over headline-grabbing prison protests, Terri is informed that his apolitical point of view has put him on the endangered list. "That's the problem with not picking a side," he is told. "You eventually end up in no man's land."

But Terri has chosen a side -- music -- and, thanks to Des Kennedy's lively direction and Jennifer Rooney's fierce musical staging, Good Vibrations calls up the exhilarating release that punk must have provided in a society overdosing on hate. To be sure, this is not a conventional musical. The score functions more like a soundtrack, weaving together songs by Belfast punk bands like Rudi, The Outcasts, and Protex -- each a pure jolt of sonic caffeine -- with '60s hits, for example, The Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is to Love Him," sung by Ruth while Terri is getting beat up. (Passing through occasionally is the spirit of Hank Williams, depicted as a kind of patron saint looking over Terri's shoulder.) Good Vibrations has its ragged moments, its flirtations with cliché, but it makes you understand the fever that drives Terri in good times and bad, climaxing with the fundraising concert, designed to rescue him from bankruptcy, that is both a pyrrhic victory and a spiritual triumph.

The gifted Glen Wallace makes Terri, warts and all, into a surprisingly innocent figure, an evangelist promoting his cause with a terrier-like tenacity and bottomless capacity for joy. The role of Ruth, who drifts away from the neglectful Terri, is pretty standard stuff, but Jayne Wisener adds some interesting shadings, especially in a breakup scene marked by forgiveness mingled with regret. (The real-life Ruth Carr is a poet of some note, a point barely touched on here.) Everyone else plays multiple roles, juicing up the songs with jolts of pure electricity.

In Grace Smart's set design, a suitably gritty industrial space becomes, with minimal alterations, various locations. (For example, road boxes open to become record racks in Terri's store.) Gillian Lennox's costumes run the gamut of the era's styles, from spiked hair and dog collars to granny gowns. Even when delivering a full-bore punk anthem like "Teenage Kicks," Ian Vennard's sound design is big without being assaultive. Jack Knowles' lighting uses PAR cans and pastel tones to create a vintage look, but at times I wished to see the actors' faces more clearly.

Then again, lighting has an important role to play in the finale, which jumps ahead, startlingly, to the present day. (In real life, Terri Hooley is still with us, having endured several medical setbacks.) Like the rest of the show, it both celebrates and casts a sideways glance at Terri's remarkable perseverance. Say what you will, he has been an oddball prophet of sorts, his zeal for music pointing to a post-sectarian future for his ravaged country. It is, I suspect, the chief reason that Good Vibrations is the most likable new musical to come our way in months. --David Barbour