Musical conceived with Bill Kenwright premieres at Tabard

A musical first conceived through conversations with legendary theatre producer Bill Kenwright is finally making it to the stage in Chiswick, as Who Put the Bomp? opens at the Tabard Theatre on 14th October.

The brand-new musical is written and directed by Keith Strachan, whose extensive career as a director includes the West End and touring hit Dreamboats and Petticoats, alongside a host of other major productions. Its origins lie in Strachan’s years working with Kenwright and fellow producer Laurie Mansfield.

The cast have been photographed in rehearsals at the Tabard Theatre as they prepare for the production, which opens on 14th October and runs until 7th November.

Strachan worked for Kenwright and Mansfield for many years, directing and musically directing numerous productions. The three shared a particular enthusiasm for Doo-Wop, and Strachan’s unaccompanied arrangements of pop songs became a recurring feature of their shows.

“I always loved Doo-Wop songs when I was in my teens,” says Strachan. “The idea of a group of four or five kids singing unaccompanied on street corners always appealed to me.”

That love of the music found its way into Dreamboats and Petticoats, where Strachan created Doo-Wop arrangements of songs including Poetry in Motion, Donna and It’s Only Make Believe.

Chiswick audiences may already have had a taste of Strachan’s Doo-Wop treatment. In the Tabard’s production of HMS Pinafore earlier this year, which he directed, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Over the Bright Blue Sea was reinvented as an Andrews Sisters-style number, complete with Doo-Wop backing from the boys – a playful foretaste of the sound that takes centre stage in Who Put the Bomp?.

The idea of creating an entire show around the music, however, goes back much further. During his years working with Bill Kenwright and Laurie Mansfield, the three often talked about developing a Doo-Wop show together.

“We many times, the three of us, discussed the idea of doing a Doo-Wop show and I even got as far as a treatment for one, but it never came to fruition,” Strachan recalls.

“Sadly Bill died in 2023, so that particular one died with him.”

Or so he thought.

More recently, while searching for an idea for a small-scale musical that could be staged at the Tabard, Strachan suddenly remembered the abandoned project and tracked down his original treatment.

The challenge was that the story he had conceived years earlier was set in New York and belonged firmly to the past. Rather than simply revive it, he decided to start again.

“What about a group of kids in London who amazingly fall in love with the era and become overnight TikTok stars?” he says. “Well, stranger things have happened.”

The result is Who Put the Bomp (in the bomp ba bomp ba bomp)?, a new musical about a group of young Londoners discovering the extraordinary harmonies and songs of the Doo-Wop era and forming a group of their own.

The score brings together classics including Blue Moon, Sh-Boom, Only You, The Great Pretender, A Teenager in Love, Chapel of Love and the title song, Who Put the Bomp?

It is also being created on a deliberately intimate scale. Where a West End or touring version might employ a cast of ten, a five-piece band and amplification, Strachan is attempting something rather different at the Tabard.

“In the Tabard, the challenge is to create a big sound with five people plus a piano and no microphones,” he says. “But that’s also part of the joy.”

Asked to name his favourite Doo-Wop song, he has a simple answer.

“I have so many! And they’re all in this show Who Put the Bomp!”