I don't know if this has been posted or not, but there is a half page article in today's Daily Telegraph on a new stage  play on the life of Marvin Gaye.

It is on at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton until June 11th before moving to the Hackney Empire from June 15th until July 3rd.

Ive got tickets for the Derngate on Saturday.

ill let you know what I think.

I saw this done years ago in London - it was a play on his life story followed by a 90 minute concert of some of his top recordings

Dutch Robinson was the artist for the concert part - had it spot on

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/theatre/what-to-see/why-marvin-gayes-death-was-a-greek-tragedy/

For anyone interested, this is the link to the article.

The play is entitled 'Soul' and the music collaboration is by Gordon Banks, who worked with Marvin from 1977.

I saw it Saturday,and found it well acted and following closely to books ive read about his life. The play seemed to concentrate on his strange  relationship with his mother and his violent relationship with his father which ultimately led to his untimely demise.

The one mistake was tammi Terrell singing "You are everything" and "Stop Look Listen to your Heart" which were recorded years after her death with Diana Ross.

All in all I enjoyed the show. Although there were a few empty seats

It's playing in Hackney soon

Was reviewed in The Guardian last week:-

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/25/soul-review-roy-williams-marvin-gaye-drama-doesnt-get-it-on

 

I went with my wife and a friend last night to the final performance in Northampton. We all thought it was excellent, and one area where I'd agree with the pretty poor review in the Guardian is that Abiona Omonua sang superbly in the role of Tammi Terrell.

We had brilliant seats in what turned out to be the 2nd row bang centre (should have been 3rd row), with the 1st row removed so that they could have steps up to the stage allowing Marvin's two sisters to occasionally step out of the frame for their narration of the story.

I think the Guardian review by Lyn Gardner misses the point in criticising the play for the focus on Mavin's immediate family and that we hear very little of his music. There are so many compilation CDs, reissues and downloads and all sorts of ways you can hear his music; the whole point of this was to shine a light on a possible interpretation of his relationship with siblings and parents. Whether it does so correctly or not may be up for debate, but giving it a bad review for not being an end to end rehash of his songs is plain dumb.