Arthur Darvill's gutsy R&B score provides the bump and grind of Walker's vibrant production...The singing is fabulous...Hard-wired with street wit and sexual energy

Hip and humourous: a boisterous hit

Ragged and rude...Bursting with raw and refreshing new talent...BRING IT ON

Hilarious...an elating sprint through the booze-sodden pleasures of London nightlife

Enormously entertaining, full bodied and sexy

Camden gets a serenade in soul music as well as neon prose in this funk/reggae musical from its resident playwright Che Walker and his long-time collaborator, composer Arthur Darvill.

SASSY...TREMENDOUS...ROUGH, RAW AND HUGELY ENJOYABLE

Bristles with sassy riffs and layered rhythms….Darvill’s music is thrilling … by the end there is a good chance you’ll feel like dancing

The talent on stage is tremendous….It's most obvious in the performers - Omar Lyefook sings soulfully, Arinze Kene punchily. But it's there, too, in the big lift of Arthur Darvill's music, running from soul to jazz. It's also there in Che Walker's script: he tells his story - a simple one of three men and two women meeting, fighting, getting off with each other and failing to get off with each other in a bar which is about to close down - in a mix of raunchy and rococo, of the fancy and the fierce. Here's an evening in which women get a real shout...

Funky score...pungency and pizzazz

Gutsy...soaring sexiness

Che Walker’s themes of love, redemption, unrequited passions and revenge, mixed with a subtle dose of mistaken identity, create a sense that as modern and relevant to the 21st century the story of these Camden misfits may be, it is a tale that has been told before in many different ways, but never with so much soul.
 

It seems that every visit to this temple of modern theatre, The Young Vic, is rewarded with the unexpected. This time it is Che Walker’s Been So Long which takes an innovative look at the musical, bringing some fresh, lively and engaging realism to the stage.