By Stewart Weir
I have three links to George Best. One was an all too brief evening in Ballyclare, in his company with his then-agent Bill McMurdo. The second was I saw him play for Hibs, and thirdly – and even more tenuous – his former sister-in-law (who I saw a matter of weeks ago) used to cut my hair.
So when the offer came for an evening out at the theatre, Glasgow’s famous Pavilion, to see Dancing Shoes – The George Best Story, I could hardly pass it up, given my closeness to the Irish superstar.
Joking aside, you’re never sure what to expect with musicals, especially these days where the more famous ones are based on 30- or 40-year-old Top Ten hits, often thrown in as glue to join up a flimsy storyline. Not so here.
For starters, there was nothing soft or woolly about Best’s life story. It was hard from the off, being raised in Belfast, leaving home so young with Eric McMordie (who would later make it at Middlesbrough), and then made even harder, if not impossible, by his own demons.
The show deals with all of that, managing to add humour into some of the tragedy but staying loyal to the way things were – which on a great many occasions saw Best turn up late, or not at all.
To that end, there was an element of irony last night when the start of the performance was delayed for a good half hour because of "technical difficulties" – or was it musical differences? Who can say, but who really cared once the warm-ups were done and the whistle sounded?
Set- and backdrop-wise, it looked quite sparse, but served well its purpose of representing East Belfast, Liverpool docks, Old Trafford and Los Angeles.
At times you did end up watching how the superb cast worked not only as singers and dancers, but also as scene-shifters. Seamlessly best sums up that aspect.
The entire cast was excellent – but, a bit like the Manchester United team of the mid-to-late 60s, it was difficult to see the rest of the stars behind the glorious shooting star that was Best – or, on this occasion, Aidan O’Neill.
OK, his footballing prowess was a bit Belhaven Best rather than George Best, but re-enacting his magic onstage was always a compromise. That aside, it was an engrossing effort by O’Neill, ably assisted by the rest of the team who brought the characters in George’s career to life – especially those from the football world such as Harry Gregg, Matt Busby and Tommy Docherty.
Sadly, for those from the east, there is no mention of arguably Best’s greatest feat – playing for Hibs. (NB – that line was inserted wholly and solely for those in the vicinity of Easter Road or Leith.)
But Best did it all, and most of it was included.There was the re-enactment of the "Cookstown Sausages" advert (even down to Best’s best polo-neck sweater), and the famous anecdotal setting of the hotel room, with Best, a negligee-clad Miss World, Marjorie Wallace, a bed-full of cash and the mandatory bottle of bubbly, with the player being asked (this time in song) by the wee night porter, “Where Did It All Go Wrong?”
The chip shop scene was funny, but the meeting of Best and Ulster’s equally wayward sporting genius, Alexander Gordon Higgins, or "Hurricane" as he was known to the watching world, was comic excellence.
In hospital, Best is visited by Higgins, where they compared illness and infamy. For me, this was the highlight of the show, perhaps if only because I really did know Alex, having worked with, for and against him over the years.
Dancing Shoes was written by Marie Jones and Martin Lynch, with music and lyrics by J J Gilmour and Pat Gribben, and they were never going to be short of subject matter, but tied it together wonderfully well.
As a show, this was foot-tappingly great, rib-ticklingly funny – and, like the real-life tale, at times heart-tuggingly sad. Men cheered, women cried.
You’ve got until Saturday to get your ticket, your scarf and your hankies.
– Tweet Stewart Weir with thoughts and comments, @sweirz
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