Woody Sez – review

Long before Bob Dylan and the folk-inspired protest singers of the 1960s, there was Woody Guthrie, a troubadour of backwoods America who believed in "singing for the plain folks and getting tough with the rich folks".

Born in Oklahoma in 1912, Guthrie drank in the local folk songs with his mother's milk, and his sense of injustice was honed travelling around the country during the Great Depression, when he was part of the exodus from the dustbowl states to California. Guthrie knew what it was like to be hungry; he lived what he wrote, and his songs were for those who lived it too.

This low-key, high-spirited celebration of Guthrie's life and music knocks big West End biopics such as Jersey Boys into a heap of dust. The terrific on-stage quartet, playing a variety of instruments, some of which I've never seen before, whip up quite a storm in a joyful, foot-tapping show that is part-concert, part-biography. Like Guthrie himself, this is a plain, unembroidered piece. But it celebrates his restless spirit and rare ability to give voice to those without one – a cruel irony in that he, tragically, had his own power of speech taken from him by inherited illness.

The songs take centre stage, with snippets of biography woven through. Though it's best when everybody just sings and plays, and is a little padded – it would be better without an interval – it stirringly captures the rebellious spirit of Guthrie's times, and of our own, too.