REVIEW: Chet Baker: Let’s Get Lost at Bridge House Theatre 07-18 May 2024

‘Alfredo Mudie Smart presents a quite extraordinary skill-set that brings a legend to life’ ★★★★

Alfredo Mudie Smart is very talented and very good looking. He has elected to situate his 45 minute tribute to jazz legend Chet Baker in the early years of the trumpeter’s career, when Baker was very talented and very good looking; trumpeter, crooner, matinee idol, about to be a film star like James Dean. Also jazz savant. Also a junkie.

Chet Baker as the Prince of Cool Jazz is the character Tim Connery, the writer, puts on stage. Mr. Smart plays fine trumpet, sings with a rich tenor, looks wonderful, and inhabits the doubts, the rebelliousness, and the self-destructive streak that would make Baker haggard, toothless, and serially deported from most of the European nations that loved his legend but couldn’t handle his reality. Tim Connery’s script foreshadows that decline, and has some excellent thoughts about jazz and stardom.

Alfredo Mudie Smart presents a quite extraordinary skill-set that brings a legend to life. A forty-five minute play makes for a brief evening’s entertainment, but this is forty-five minutes of quality.

Runs until 18^th May.

Chet Baker: Let’s Get Lost at Bridge House Theatre, Penge

07-18 May 2024 19:30

Box Office: https://thebridgehousetheatre.co.uk/shows/chet-baker-lets-get-lost/

Cast

ALFREDO MUDIE SMART as Chet Baker

Artistic Team

Director

FINLAY GLEN

Writer

TIM CONNERY

Lighting Designer

JOSEPH LINDOE

Sound Designer

JOSEPH LINDOE

Reviewed by Chris Lilly