Review: The Commitments at Sheffield Lyceum crackles with talent

But it’s the second act of comedy musical The Commitments, at The Lyceum in Sheffield until Saturday, when things get really good.

The ramshackle band of eejits is assembled, somehow through their squabbles rehearsals are complete, and the self-styled ‘hardest working band in the world’ unleash themselves on Dublin – and us.

Put your working-class hands together and get ready to enjoy a pure and simple feel-good celebration of soul.

Based on Roddy Doyle’s 1986 debut novel, and the Alan Parker film which followed five years later, the show is riotous, rude, irreverent and raw.

Set in fictional Ballytown in north Dublin in the 80s, when drugs and joblessness cast their shadow over the real life Park Hill-esque Ballymun estate, the plot follows the fortunes of a group of young music lovers trying to sing their way to a life less ordinary.

There are some nice period touches in the set and costume design: the streets in the sky concrete flats, the parka anoraks and analogue telephones, the moulded plastic canteen seating in the sweet factory where Jimmy Rabbitte – band manager by night, sweets rep by day – works.

Dublin born and raised actor (and, distractingly, Stephen Mangan lookalike) James Killeen plays a hugely likeable Jimmy, and Nigel Pivaro (Terry Duckworth in Coronation Street) is his Da.

But it’s Ian McIntosh in the lead role of Deco who steals the show. As the temperamental, sometimes obnoxious, but truly talented lead singer with the band, his charisma is electric.

His transformation from shambolic soup-slurper to sizzling hot snappy-suited sex symbol – via a memorable scene in his Superman Y-fronts – is sensational.

In the foot-stomping finale, when The Commitments get the crowd up, clapping, and singing along with a concert just for us, you forget whether you’re watching Deco or McIntosh or both, and he’s clearly having an absolute blast back in the role he originally co-debuted in the first West End production of The Commitments in 2013.

As Deco himself would marvel… “Brilliant”.