Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma comes to London, an evening of music and nostalgia that is entertaining at times. Creative supercouple John and Danielle Merrigan return with their Lynott‑inspired play almost a year after it ran at Dublin’s Vicar Street. Jason Figgis returns as director.
Eric Bell, Thin Lizzy’s answer to Syd Barrett, kicks off the show with a heartfelt story about himself and Lynott in the early days. The septuagenarian promises to return at the end, which he does, brandishing his electric guitar.
The recently deceased Lynott arrives in Tír na bhFilí, the land of the poets, greeted by the late, great Brendan Behan and the later, greater Oscar Wilde. Heart‑to‑heart chats over a few pints of plain are punctuated by musical accompaniments, which generally work well. The play follows the early years of the band, stopping before their global success with albums like Jailbreak, and the audience listens to Lynott as he describes growing up a “black Irish bastard” in 1960s Dublin.
Lynott seems at times reborn in Peter M. Smith. Riley Clark and Padraig O’Loingsigh play Wilde and Behan well. Mazz Murray, of We Will Rock You and Mamma Mia! fame, joins the ensemble and graces the stage as Philomena, Lynott’s mother.
Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma is not quite a full‑on jukebox musical, nobody ever breaks into song mid‑conversation, and there is no dancing or choreography, but it is not a straight play either. The audience were not sure whether to dance or not, and one man was forcibly removed just after the interval for approaching Smith and cheering during one of his songs. A healthy number of heckles were shouted out at the cast as the play progressed, one woman reminding Wilde that it was his round. The cast took them well. Of the fifteen songs, seven were originals written for the play by John Merrigan and Danielle Morgan. Disappointingly, the band often stood dormant as an audio clip played from the speakers. Skid Row, Jailbreak and Moonlight (the latter sung twice) featured. Unfortunately, there was no “Boys Are Back in Town”, which they performed in the earlier Dublin production.
The music in the second act had far more classics, Murray returned for an actual song, and the general energy of the show seemed to pick up. If the play had only been an hour and cut the entire first half, nothing too important or interesting would have been lost.
The lighting felt amateurish, partly due to a lack of rigging. West End royalty Mazz Murray had to deal with the brunt of it, at one point chasing her spotlight across the stage as it wandered about like a drunken poet.
Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma is the third in a list of muses for the Merrigans after plays about Wilde and Behan. It is a fitting tribute to the Crumlin musician, although at times it feels like a first draft. Moonlight: The Philip Lynott Enigma will show at the Glasgow Pavilion on 20 May, beginning a tour that will end where it started, at Dublin’s Vicar Street, in June.
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