It is my favourite place name. Tiger Bay could be the result of that game where you find your sex-worker name by adding your pet’s name to your street name. And the area itself, Cardiff’s docks, the birthplace of Shirley Bassey, is brimming over with material: gambling, prostitution, warmth, poverty, unfairness, multicultural harmony. A vivid photographic archive shows these relatively unsung streets as completely distinctive.
So why is a sense of place so lacking in composer Daf James and lyricist Michael Williams’s energetic but flabby new musical? It is not lack of talent among the performers. There are exceptional voices. Busisiwe Ngejane as the prostitute Klondike Ellie. John Owen-Jones, a veteran/survivor of Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera. Ruby Llewellyn (good actress too) as Ianto the water “boy”, whose real identity looks like a rather desperate attempt to get the show to keep up with the 21st century.
Anna Fleischle’s hulking iron design does little in the way of evoking. But the problem runs deeper: the characters might have been bussed in from any number of melodramas: brutal harbourmaster, spirited prostitute, chirpy child. The music swells vigorously, with some nods to Sondheim, but never startles. An orphan plotline recalls Coram Boy, one of the biggest successes of Melly Still, who co-directs Tiger Bay with Max Barton. The willingness of the oppressed to get jigging and choric recalls Les Mis. Most of all, giganticism (three hours, everything puffed out) muffles and muddles: a 1950s movie with the same title starring Hayley Mills looks grittier and more specific. Tiger Bay should roar with excitement, not make you whimper with fatigue.
• At the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, until 25 November
