Hong Kong rock ’n’ roll jukebox musical will keep fans happy with its string of classic hits

Jukebox musicals built around songs from the rock ’n’ roll era are now ubiquitous in London’s West End and on Broadway. The most successful shows at the box office have been based on hits by hugely popular artists, usually tenuously linked to a preposterous plot.

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Smokey Joe’s Cafe, first staged in 1994, is an anomaly within the genre. It has no plot, no dialogue, and no named characters. But it does have 39 songs, among them some of the most memorable hits of the 1950s and ’60s, all written or co-written with others by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

It is also something of an anomaly on the Hong Kong résumé of Mohamed Drissi, the director and choreographer, whose production of the show is being staged from April 20 to 22 at Hong Kong’s City Hall.

Drissi, founder of musical theatre company Hong Kong 3 Arts Musical Institute, established in 2005, is better known for Cantonese adaptations of Broadway musicals. But he acknowledges that some lyrics simply will not convert. Leiber and Stoller wrote in the distinctively American vernacular of a particular era.

“I saw Smokey Joe’s Cafe some years ago in the US and somehow it stayed in my mind. The songs are all well-known pop numbers, sung by Elvis Presley and other singers, but each tells a story. It’s a fun show, it’s entertaining and it focuses on the voices,” he says.

Leiber and Stoller were a songwriting and record producing team who enjoyed their first decade of chart hits at a time when artists were not expected to write their own material – although the show closer, Stand by Me, was co-written with the singer Ben E. King, and according to Stoller was half King’s work and 25 per cent each his and Leiber’s.