In retrospect, it was a no-brainer of a move, really. The Harder They Come (Stratford East) the cult Jamaican crime movie from 1972 was known for having a killer soundtrack, one that more or less introduced reggae to a lot of countries. Making it into a musical was inevitable – so inevitable that Suzan-Lori Parks’s adaptation directed by Matthew Xia is the second attempt to date.
The story follows Ivan Martin (Natey Jones), a country boy determined to make it big in the bustle of Kingston, first as a musician and later, as a gangster. The fame and infamy are inseparable; anyone with even a cursory knowledge of reggae will know how important the figure of the outlaw is as a source of lyrical inspiration, and The Harder They Come highlights this fixation by making the two roles, rockstar and outlaw the same man, not dissimilar from Nicholas Roeg’s Performance, from 1970.
Jones does a great job as Ivan; I’ll try not to compare the play to the film too much (one of the laziest ways to review an adaptation) but Jimmy Cliff’s performance in the original film starts off too cool – he’s already a rockstar. Through Jones’ performance we see Ivan transform over time from gullible country boy to a self-assured townie, and then that same self-assuredness turns into something darker as he feels more and more hard done by. It’s like you were watching A Star Is Born and accidentally flipped over to The Public Enemy at the halfway mark.
The songs, unsurprisingly, are incredible: the soundtrack to the film already serves as a primer to the best reggae of the early 70s, it was a jukebox musical in waiting this whole time. Jones and the supporting cast do a great job, and the relative cosiness of Stratford East means that the musical numbers still feel small-scale and intimate, taking place as they do in the shantytown setting of Kingston (A larger scale, more bombastic, Broadway-esque musical version of the same material would have felt completely inappropriate, fun as it is to imagine).
There’s not a great deal to say about this one – it’s a simple story that hits familiar beats, performed brilliantly to a phenomenal soundtrack, which include the Jimmy Cliff hits, Many Rivers to Cross and You Can Get It If You Really Want, and Rivers of Babylon, Sweet and Dandy and of course the title track. Strongly recommended.
The Harder They Come – www.stratfordeast.com
Photo credit: Danny Kaan.
