ROCKETMAN

Dexter Fletcher (who most people would know as an actor from TV’s Press Gang, Band of Brothers and Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) previously directed a musical with 2013’s Sunshine on Leith - an adaptation of the stage musical featuring the music of ’The Proclaimers’ – so between that and the Bohemian Rhapsody debacle (he performed directing duties for the final two weeks of principle photography when director Bryan Singer was booted off that film) he’s played in the musical sandbox enough times to know how to suffuse a sense of fun, energy and warmth into a story.

Rocketman frames its plot with the device of a rehab therapy group, allowing Taron Edgerton’s Elton John to jump through his bio (performing all the songs himself and doing a hell of a job), at first with Elton's early years – when he was known as Reggie Dwight and a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music, living with his mother Sheila (Bryce Dallas Howard) and struggling with his distant, authoritarian father (Steven Mackintosh), then tracking the start of his musical partnership with Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell) and ultimately his burgeoning stardom and stratospheric US success under the volatile management of lover/handler John Reid (Richard Madden).

Is it worth checking out? Have a listen and find out…