Klook's Last Stand

‘Klook’s Last Stand’ sees writer and director Ché Walker once more collaborating with 1990s soul singer Omar Lye-Fook. As you might expected from the (media titled) ‘Laureate of Camden’ and ‘Father of British Soul’ this is a polished piece of urban poetry: an epic love story told through heightened verbal riffs and melting melodies. It’s also so sugary it could give you cavities.

It starts out sassy enough. The first meeting between Klook (Ako Mitchell) and Vinette (Sheila Atim)is a charged one. As this jaded ex-criminal and this wounded runaway banter and eyeball one another, sparks crackle, ignited by their quick wit. But there’s tragedy in their teasing, and as Klook’s past comes back to haunt him the comedy that initially saves it from being cloying turns into sentimental cliché.

Although described as ‘a play with songs’ there’s a Broadway feel to the emotionally persuasive music, which sits uncomfortably both with Walker’s bare staging and the cool jazz feel to Rio Kal’s musical accompaniment. It’s not bad – Lye-Fook and Anoushka Lucas’s soaring songs possibly providing the answer for the atrophied British musical industry – just ill-fitted.

Cameron, Lloyd Webber et al might want to stake a claim on Mitchell and Atim. Walker’s statuesque lovers give pitch-perfect performances that require both impressive vocal and emotional range. And every producer going should snap up Arnim Friess, whose startlingly expressionistic lighting design perfectly captures the mid-’90s spirit of Walker and Lye-Fook’s retro piece.