Maybe not all publicity is good publicity after all. The West End transfer of this play about musical icon Ian Dury made the news last week when it was reported that Chris Langham, the actor convicted of downloading child pornography, worked on the script and original star Jud Charlton had left the production — either sacked or not re-engaged, depending on reports. Omens were bad.

It is a relief, then, that new boy Adrian Schiller is an effective Dury doppelgänger and that Hit Me! is a nicely nostalgic scuttle through the singer’s rollercoaster life.
Dury was clearly a complex man. Director/writer Jeff Merrifield’s high-spirited two-hander portrays him as nasty one minute, nice the next, particularly after a drink. “Jekyll and Hardy”, as it is put.

The plot imagines meetings between Dury and his minder, ex-con Fred “Spider” Rowe (Josh Darcy) in 1980 and 1990, though neither character ages — so much for sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll being bad. Their expletive-strewn banter makes a night out with Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross resemble a vicar’s tea party, but underneath there is genuine affection.

At the outset Dury is at his Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick heights, a scruffy cross between Johnny Rotten, Albert Steptoe and Harold Steptoe, rebuffing overtures from Andrew Lloyd Webber. Rowe has to protect this “ego on a stick”. A walking stick. Dury contracted polio aged seven in 1949, probably at a Southend swimming pool. 

By their 1990 encounter money and fame has fractured friendships. Brilliantly talented, Dury knows he has more to offer, but we fast forward to 2000 and he has died of metastatic liver cancer, his full potential never realised. There is nothing wrong with the sentimental conclusion, though the heavenly encore ladles it on a little too thickly.

Hit Me! is an odd hybrid, perfect for ageing rockers. Not a tedious tribute act, despite the singalong songs, and not Mamma Mia! either.

It is never bland, but it only scratches the surface of a unique talent, portraying yet never quite reconciling Dury’s contradictions. As Spider Rowe says, “there was nobody clever or witty enough to write his epitaph”. Good, but if only Dury could have written this himself it might have been great.
Until 14 February, 0844 847 2475