Review: Syncopated at Liverpool Playhouse Studio ***1/2

One bench, a pair of people, two time periods and four entwined stories.

Set both in present day Liverpool and the post-war, just pre-race riot city of 1919, playwright Varaidzo’s Syncopated – a co-production between Talawa Theatre Company and the Everyman and Playhouse - mixes facts and fiction in an exploration of love, loss, ambition, connection, the transformative power of music and the resilience of the human spirit.

A chance meeting on the Mersey waterfront between ‘Him’ (Joseph Munroe-Robinson), a preoccupied, sax-wielding music student from London, and Teddy Oyediran’s ‘Her’, a chatty and, it turns out, similarly preoccupied young Liverpool woman, spins in and out of a representative play-within-a-play.

Munroe-Robinson’s Him is struggling with how to approach the love story he envisages at the heart of his musical about the real-life, all-Black Southern Syncopated Orchestra who crossed the Atlantic in 1919, arriving at the Liverpool docks to bring a revolutionary style of jazz to the British people.

Oyediran’s seemingly self-possessed Her is also struggling, but it’s only as the narrative develops that we begin to understand the invisible burden she's carrying.

Taking on fictional personas - Syncopated Orchestra saxophonist Frank and Penny, a girl yearning to be transported from her current life - they seek to piece together a plot which satisfies his vision of paying tribute to the pioneering musicians he admires, and her need to be seen as a person in her own right rather than a supporting character in someone else’s drama – their contrasting preoccupations, or ‘rhythms’ if you will, ultimately merging into a syncopated whole.

Above: Joseph Munroe-Robinson as Him and Teddy Oyediran as Her in Syncopated. Top: Munroe-Robinson as Frank. Photos by DIDEYESHUTTER.

Billed as the ‘American Wizards who drive away dull care’, the real-life orchestra took London by storm and then toured Britain to acclaim, returning to Liverpool for a run of concerts at different venues in February 1920 which was ultimately cut short by what their manager George W Lattimore cryptically described as ‘an unfortunate disagreement with several of the principals’ (they went to London for the weekend and declined to return).

Before the city residency imploded however, reviewers gave their verdict, with the Echo heralding the pop stars of their day thus: “They must be seen – and heard – to be believed. One is taken into a world only vaguely hinted at previously. What we have known as Jazz is archaic by comparison.”

Varaidzo weaves an absorbing tale around what is fascinating subject matter, although the dialogue of the initial ‘meet cute’, particularly the Her side of it, currently feels rather stagey and unbelievable. Certainly in contrast with the unfolding of the character’s backstory towards the end of the 75-minute piece, where Oyediran's Her exudes a palpable vulnerability and generates a resonant sense of emotion.

Above: Joseph Munroe-Robinson as Him and Teddy Oyediran as Her . Photo by DIDEYESHUTTER

Munroe-Robinson radiates warmth and, in the guise of the fictional Frank, a hypnotic energy and sense of joie de vivre. He also produces some lovely melodic lines on the sax, although not as many as some (OK, I) might like. A story about jazz pioneers really needs a full infusion of music.

Given a sense of intimacy on the Studio's thrust stage, Keshi Raghu's set and Stella Okafor-Ross's subtle and atmospheric lighting lends the action an almost early 20th Century 'kinema' feel.

Saying that, despite it being rooted in real-life events, there’s also a certain amount of artistic licence around the time period, both in references (a niggle, but the first exploratory radio broadcasts weren’t made until early in 1920 and few homes had a set before at least 1922) and almost Flapperish costume.

As for the Southern Syncopated Orchestra itself? Its triumphs were cut tragically short in October 1921 after several members died when their Glasgow-Dublin steamer SS Rowan was sunk in the waters off the west coast of Scotland, carved in two – ironically – by a ship which was inbound for Liverpool.