Alice Keys: Rocket Fan ★★★

Don’t confuse Alice Keys with Alicia from over the pond. This Miss Keys may also be a pianist and singer, but she’s from South London and has a weird love of Elton John’s music. Rocket Fan is her one-woman musical comedy show telling of love interlaced with snippets of songs from the great man’s back catalogue. Starting with a romantic encounter in Croydon in 2007 and jemmying in bits of Rocket Man, Benny & The Jets, Sad Songs, Sacrifice and Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word along the way, she wryly tells of love found and lost via conversations with an old flame, a foe and a friend. All this, as well as how she became the number one Elton John tribute act in her home town, packed into sixty minutes.

At the start, Keys saunters onto the small stage, a large glittery glasses motif as a backdrop, finding a Yamaha electric piano waiting for her to start playing her version of Rocket Man. Dressed in white with an understated amount of sparkle and sequins, she is unusually unassuming in the way she addresses the audience, gently encouraging us to get involved in the fun with various comic devices (no spoilers, you’ll have to find out). This show does need group participation for much of its comedy to work. Keys slightly awkwardly flips between voices and mannerisms to indicate who she is portraying (flame, foe or friend) as she tells her laboured love story. These affectations are counterbalanced by lyric-based puns and visual gags (mostly based on Elton’s costumes) to encourage the audience to giggle. The whole show is rounded up with a good old singalong to a medley of the previously performed Elton hits for some feel-good factor.

Over the course of an hour, Keys offers a gentle homage to EJ with some comic wordplay using Bernie Taupin’s lyrics. Her storytelling is sweet and simple, mimicking the way some modern-day musicals crowbar in the popular tunes between awkward setups. If you like Elton’s music, need a few laughs and don’t mind a bit of audience karaoke, then this may be the show for you. It’s best enjoyed if you do your homework beforehand, so start listening to your Greatest Hits albums immediately.

This production was reviewed in preview ahead of the Fringe at the Comedy Museum, London