When Bob Carlton spliced rock songs into the plot of the 1956 movie Forbidden Planet to create his hit musical Return to the Forbidden Planet he kept the Shakespearean references to a minimum (the movie’s plot echoes that of The Tempest). But when he rummaged through his collection of old vinyl again to develop From a Jack to a King no such restraint inhibited him. Apart from the occasional wisecrack from a Raymond Chandleresque cop, all the dialogue ingeniously misquotes the Bard to suit a cast of seedy characters inhabiting the backstreets of 1960s Soho.

It is a mad idea that works pretty well, but there’s more. The plot gives us the story of Eric Glamis’s blood-stained wade to rock stardom, clambering over the corpses of rivals, terrified by their ghosts and meeting a murky end when enemies approach carrying branches torn, no doubt, from the woods of Soho Square.

First seen wandering wimpishly through the deadend streets of W1, Philip Reed’s Eric is chosen by three witchlike creatures – a backing group – as a candidate for fame. Renamed Thane Cawdor, he proves a sensation on drums, and even more so on guitar, and after interfering with his rival’s bike – “Is this a spanner I see before me?” – reaches the top from which, of course, nemesis tips him off.

And animating all this nonsense is a score of rock hits from the Fifties and Sixties, chosen, as in the tradition of the best musicals, to express and even thrust forward the plotline. It is great to hear these evergreens performed live again – Leader of the Pack, Tell Laura I Love Her, Shakin’ All Over and the rest – and only the excessive feedback spoilt them. Unwanted blasts often obliterated the dialogue and needs to be remedied.

The cast of nine, along with the director Matt Devitt, who played Eric in the original production, belong to the Queen’s Theatre’s resident company of actor-musicians, Cut to the Chase. This recent development in the genre of stage musicals is one I welcome with enthusiasm. Something magical occurs when characters pick up guitar, trumpet or sax and continue their characterisation not just through singing but in playing the accompanying instrument, too. Devitt whirls the show along, in, on and around Mark Walters’s mobile set of Soho seediness. The company are expert and when the feedback behaves itself the evening will become excellent.

Jeremy Kingston

The Times - 3rd September 2007