Drifters Girl

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Their songs are among the most famous and most loved in history, with the likes of Save The Last Dance For Me, Under The Boardwalk and Saturday Night At The Movies giving them huge hits on both sides of the Atlantic. They've sold more than 200 million singles and more than 100 million albums worldwide. But before The Drifters Girl musical came along relatively little was known about the vocal group's history (since forming in 1953 they've featured 60 different vocalists) and the woman, Faye Treadwell, who along with her husband George helped turn them into a global phenomenon.

Having played at Newcastle's Theatre Royal in October 2021 before moving to the Garrick Theatre in London's West End, where it enjoyed packed houses and nightly standing ovations before concluding its run in the West End in October last year, the musical is now embarking on a UK and Ireland tour, arriving at the Liverpool Empire Theatre this month. "Audiences are in for a great time," promises director Jonathan Church. "It's a celebration of the music of The Drifters along with an incredibly rich, dramatic story. Faye was such a trailblazer and what I hope the show does is tell a story that a lot of people don't know with a lot of great music that they know well." 

And the music is incorporated in ingenious ways. Most of the group numbers are done as performances, as The Drifters themselves would have performed them in concert or in the studio, whereas Faye's songs express what she's thinking or feeling. "So, we've taken several musical forms and found our unique way of blending music with storytelling," Jonathan notes. 

The narrative behind such songs as Kissin' In The Back Row Of The Movies, Stand By Me and Come On Over To My Place intrigued producer Michael Harrison (whose current productions include The Bodyguard, The Wizard of Oz, Crazy For You and Annie) had heard all the hits. "But I didn't know very much about the group or Faye herself," he says. "When I tracked down her daughter Tina I told her that I'd love to create a musical about The Drifters and she was the one who said 'If you're gonna tell the story of the group, you really wanna tell the story of my mother'. I thought 'I'm sure you would say that' but then I heard Faye's story and realised that Tina was right." 

Faye, who passed away in 2011, was there through the highs and the lows - from hit records and sell-out tours to legal battles and line-up changes. When her husband George died in 1967, she bought out his partners and took over management of the group full-time. Like Jonathan, Michael sees her as a trailblazer. "She was a woman to begin with, which was hard enough in the music industry. She was African-American, which made it even harder. For me, one of the things that makes The Drifters Girl special is that it's not just focused on the men. Don't get me wrong, there are some explosive moments in the show which are about the boys, but at the heart of it is this extraordinary woman." 

The show's book was written by Ed Curtis, with Tina Treadwell being consulted throughout the writing and development process. "And even during previews she was very specific about certain things, like Faye's story arc and the way she spoke," Michael notes. "None of us ever met Faye and we didn't know what kind of a personality she was, so we needed Tina to give us a little bit of that meat on the bone." 

Michael approached Jonathan Church, who was also intrigued to learn about Faye Treadwell's role in the group's success. "Against the odds, she became the leading black, if not the only black, female record promoter of the time and Michael thought that aspect of the story would appeal to me dramatically. What he didn't know is that, like a lot of people my age, I'd grown up watching The Drifters on Top of the Pops, so it was also delving into a little bit of my youth and teenage years."

The director didn't realise that Faye had relocated The Drifters to the UK in the early 1970s amidst litigation over the use of the band's name in the US as well as to tap into a new market. "I had no idea about any of that side of the story. That's the reason I was seeing them on Top of the Pops is that Faye decided 'I'm going to take the band to Britain and give them another 20 years of hits'.