The Simon & Garfunkel Story is exactly that. But although it’s simply a telling of their career through narrative and (mostly) their songs, this is way beyond being a mere tribute act.
The performers vary throughout the tour but for this outing in the West End Adam Dickinson was Paul Simon and Kingsley Judd played Art Garfunkel. Wisely, though, they appear as themselves, each taking their turn to tell the story of Simon and Garfunkel from their earliest encounter in their school play, Alice in Wonderland, right through to global success. These snippets of narrative are generously illustrated with performances of the songs. And it is only in the music that our two stars become their alter egos.
The songs are neatly placed into context, not only by the scene setting from the two leads, but also some well-chosen video material played on a screen behind them. Their career essentially spans the 60s so this is an era ripe with incident and news footage, which has been carefully curated to capture the key moments and issues of that heady decade. This means JFK, hippies, the Vietnam war and the moon landing to name a few. At some points I felt the videos were a little too interesting, their content distracting from the music. But this, I think, is better than having them as an irrelevant backdrop whose only role is decorative.
