By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN? Saturday 3 February 2024, opens 13 February booking until 30 March 2024 RUNTIME: 150 minutes (includes a 20-minute interval) Update: now booking Shaftesbury Theatre 15 May through 10 January 2026 Tickets

On 13 July 1985 we weren’t quite old enough for a Saturday job in Woolworth’s or WH Smith’s and instead watched Live Aid on TV at home after our paper round and if there’s 1 message from this global jukebox musical that resonates it is that individuals matter and when they work together they can change things.

• Read on for reasons including how this is over-earnest and perhaps lacking in the killer material to make good on its promise

The unexpected comic highlight was Julie Atherton’s Margaret Thatcher rapping/talking The Pretenders’ Stop Your Sobbing and Elton John’s I’m Still Standing as she rows with Craige Els’ (Matilda: The Musical, Cambridge Theatre) excellent sweary Bob Geldof about the destination of VAT from the sales of chart-topping single Do They Know It’s Christmas?

The titular Just For One Day is a line of course from David Bowie’s Heroes which is 1 of the 40 or so songs by artists who performed at that Live Aid concert to feature here.

Director Luke Sheppard (& Juliet, Shaftesbury Theatre and The Little Big Things @SohoPlace) gives us Jackie Clune’s Suzanne (The Tempest, Donmar at King’s Cross) in 2024, essentially a narrator, who was at the concert in 1985 and reminisces about her youth and being energised by Geldof’s work to raise money to fight the Ethiopian famine.

She was working in a Weston-super-Mare record shop with the man who would become her boyfriend (a hilarious Joe Edgar) and accompany her to the gig with a TV audience of more than 1.5 billion and Hope Kenna is particularly convincing as her enthusiastic younger self as we learn how she persuaded others to buy the single to help ‘feed the world’.

Young Suzanne interacts with Els’ Geldof who also explains in both the 80s and 20s how he was motivated to react to BBC news coverage of the Ethiopian famine by responding in the only way he knew how: to make music and to put on a show to raise both awareness and funds.

What we appreciated about the story was how it didn’t sugarcoat the difficulties along the way which included bypassing African truck cartels and negotiating with African military dictatorships to actually deliver the aid raised by Band and Live Aids once it had arrived on the ground near its ultimate destination.

But with songs by artists as illustrious as Madonna, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, The Who, U2, Queen, The Police, Elton John, Paul McCartney, The Pretenders, The Cars, Status Quo, Paul Weller, Sade, The Boomtown Rats, Bryan Adams, Diana Ross and Ultravox, could it ever just be more than a dispirate, if global, jukebox musical?

We are presented with an almost rehearsal room filled with accomplished musical theatre performers including Olly Dobson (Back To The Future, Adelphi), James Hameed (Be More Chill, Shaftesbury Theatre) and James Montague (Falsettos, The Other Palace) who bring the best out of the material and particularly strong are Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and The Police’s Message In A Bottle.

We could certainly sense the feelgood appreciation of story and, sorry, mostly middle-of-the-road material from the middle class and middle aged (us included!) audience around us but the message Just For One Day is desperate to convey to a new generation is that it must find its motivation and Band Aid moment.

We couldn’t help but feel that this history lesson needed newer musical material to perhaps make that argument more convincingly to a younger audience.

We were quite actually moved by the occasional references to Paula Yates and how she initially pricked Geldof’s conscience by insisting vistors to their home made a financial contribution to aid those starving in Africa in an envelope stuck to their fridge.

The best we can say about Just For One Day is that its heart is in the right place, its music is strong but its delivery is over-earnest and perhaps lacking in the killer material to make good on its promise.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Old Vic
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