New musical Sing Street is an exhaustingly brainless extension of the hit film

The songs might be fun but there are no biting insights to be had in this flimsy revamp of John Carney’s 2016 movie

Indiana Hawkes and Sheridan Townsley in ‘Sing Street’ at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre (Manuel Harlan)

Let’s get one thing straight. New musical Sing Street might be set in Eighties Dublin, but you’re not getting any biting insights into a vanished Ireland here. Much like green beer or coquettish female leprechauns, this is a kitschily ersatz Irish fantasia – a frolic through the story of a teenage band who soundtrack their ups (there are no real downs) with joyful pastiches of their favourite acts.

It’s nominally written by seasoned Irish playwright Enda Walsh (Lazarus), but there’s not much of his writing talent on display here. Instead, the story feels like a flimsy extension of the 2016 film Sing Street, the thin plotline bulked out with additional songs from the original’s songwriters Gary Clark and John Carney (who have been tinkering with the show since it premiered off-Broadway in 2019).

One day, 15-year-old schoolboy Conor (a honey-voiced Sheridan Townsley) spots moody wannabe model Raphina (the charismatic Grace Collender) striking a pose in a green phone box. Naturally, he’s got to impress her, so he starts a band, after a crash course in the decade’s finest sounds from his stoner older brother Brendan (Adam Hunter). So he assembles a gaggle of mates, and they easily achieve everything they set their minds to, encountering almost no peril or suspense along the way.

Initially at least, director Rebecca Taichman’s production has enough sass and conviction to style out this oh-too-predictable story. Against a backdrop of flashing retro graphics, the energetic young cast fling themselves around the stage pushing boxy tellies on wheels for new number “Everything Stops for Top of the Pops”. They deliver some fun tributes to classic acts, too: they pose in borrowed blouses for ludicrously costumed Duran Duran-inspired number “Riddle of the Model”, while “Beautiful Disguise” is a Kate Bush-style emotional outpouring that’s stunningly rendered in Collender’s haunting performance.

Nevertheless, as the energy dips in the second act, the story’s flaws show. There’s little interest in properly fleshing out these kids’ world: we’re told again and again that Dublin’s all poverty and boredom (“Irish boys raised on Guinness and glue,” they call themselves) without any hint of why. Raphina is being groomed by an older guy, but there’s no attempt to explore that in any detail – or to look at the inner lives of this show’s female characters full stop. The horribly underwritten character of Brendan is given way too much stage time (perhaps because Hunter is the only actor from the original film), including a bizarre sofa ballet set to a song by The Smiths. And the ending is a total mess: things devolve into an unexplained, overextended Noughties pop-punk concert that can’t mask this story’s innumerable loose ends, or bizarrely nihilistic finale.

Ultimately, Sing Street feels determinedly, exhaustingly brainless. It was originally aimed at Broadway, but its trajectory was cut short by the pandemic. Much like teenagers kept home from school, it doesn’t seem to have got much smarter in the interim. It feels like it’s pitched at secondary school kids, but you wouldn’t take teens to a show that chucks around homophobic slurs with gay abandon or is content to use child sexual abuse as no more than a little gritty retro flavour.

Adam Hunter is the only actor from the ‘Sing Street’ film to appear in the musical (Manuel Harlan)

Still, the performers give it their all, many of them making their professional debuts – and the songs are genuinely fun. Tune out the talking and you might just have a good time.

‘Sing Street’ is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until 23 August 2025