Back in standup after moonlighting as Othello in the West End, Lenny Henry confronts a green-eyed monster of his own in his new show. The jealousy is directed at Luther Vandross; Henry has harboured lifelong musical ambitions. The show traces his life through significant songs, and continues Henry's journey away from pure standup towards confessional storytelling. The jokes don't all sing in Cradle to Rave, but Henry does, and very well. His show's bass note of opportunities missed strikes at the heart.
It starts in familiar territory, with tales of Henry's taciturn dad, no-nonsense mum, and of a world in which Jamaica and Dudley were separated only by the Henrys' front door. "No one ever had sex in the Midlands," recalls Henry – but he did his best, smooching to Marvin Gaye in his friend Barrington's "passion wagon". Later, his affair with music becomes a crowded marriage when he's forced to play his wife and children's CDs at home and in the car.
As that implies, the show's conceit lets Henry address big subjects - the grubby epiphanies of his teenage years; adulthood's personal and professional frustrations – with a light touch. Who knows how upset Henry really is that a meeting with ace 80s record producer Trevor Horn came to nothing? But he plays the encounter with striking vulnerability, as Horn deflates his soul-singer dreams. The self-indulgence of Henry's subsequent grand finale is redeemed by this seeming honesty. This is a show that wears its heart on its record sleeve, and it's worth a spin.
