Review: THE HIPPIE SHAKES at Rosemary Branch Theatre 11-13 May 2022

‘a splendid integration of music and story, great tunes’ ★★★ ½

45 years ago, the youth of the USA flocked to California to be free and wear flowers and not enlist in colonial wars in South East Asia. They listened to music, experimented with mind altering chemicals, explored Free Love, and had babies. Hippie Shakes, written and directed by Frankie Regalia, tells the story of Chickie, her five children by a drug-dealing partner, and her efforts to get out from under. It is self-described as ‘gig theatre’, and employs bass, drums, and guitar to play hits from the Summer of Love plus a bit of late-70s Rolling Stones, as a background to Elliott Chase telling Chickie’s story, singing the songs and songing the sings, and unpacking the life of her character from a battered trunk.

It feels odd, and possibly irrelevant, to open a review with a reflection on morality, but the production invites us to sympathise with Chickie and applaud her efforts at self-expression and autonomy, and I kept seeing a mother who serially abandoned her children and pimped out her 15 year old daughter as a drug mule. There is a story about the Peace’n’Love era producing self-absorbed exploiters by the micro-bus full, but Frankie Regalia wasn’t talking about that, she was exploring Chickie’s proto-feminist efforts at self-fulfillment, Maybe a lack of irony there? Or irony as understood by Alanis Morissette. And, speaking as the only individual in the house who actually lived through 1967, (OK Boomer), I don’t think the drug du jour was cocaine. Cocaine is the drug of Reaganite Greed-is-Good types. And musicians.

The thing I really liked about the production was the band, and the incorporation of the 3 musicians with the story-telling. Well-chosen songs from the period (plus ‘Beast of Burden’ from 1978 – ten years after, man!), funny, effective musical comments, some very nice bits of acting by all three. They were: Paven Rai on guitar, Ryan Lester on drums, and Callum Harrison on bass. Elliott Chase made a characterful and impressive job singing as Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan and Scott McKenzie; moving between story-telling and fronting a band so easily and naturally it was barely noticeable, but it’s tough to do and she did it well. Helen Potter’s musical direction merits special mention, and if gig theatre means live music integrated into the play’s narrative, Ms. Potter made it work seamlessly.

So, a story from the 60s that could have made the lead character a lot more self-reflective, a splendid integration of music and story, great tunes, and an opportunity for an ageing, balding critic to re-live his long-haired past.

HIPPIE SHAKES at Rosemary Branch Theatre 11-13 May 2022

Box Office: https://www.rosemarybranchtheatre.co.uk/show/the-hippie-shakes-3

https://www.sweatypalmsproductions.com/