WILKO
Theatre Royal Windsor
★★★★★
“scrupulously well-informed and intelligently performed”
“When you’re facing the end, you come back to the beginning” declares Wilko Johnson (Johnson Willis) in his instantly recognisable, vowel-stretching Estuary drawl. A sentiment that informs Jonathan Maitland’s biographical ‘play with music’ about the guitarist whom film-maker Julian Temple described as ‘one of the great English eccentrics, a great national treasure waiting to be discovered’. It does, indeed, begin at the end with Wilko’s terminal cancer diagnosis (“a great career move” he quips) before rewinding to a sixteen-year-old John Wilkinson rebelling against an abusive father whilst coveting a black and red Fender Telecaster in the local music shop window. It was his childhood sweetheart, Irene Knight (Lara Lemon), who stumped up the cash to pay for the guitar. They later married, and it is this poignant yet troubled love story, running parallel to Wilko’s own narrative, that compellingly lifts the show from the clutches of docudrama into a nostalgic celebration. Lacking in sentimentality, “Wilko: Love and Death and Rock ‘n’ Roll” is scrupulously well-informed and intelligently performed, turning the facts into myth.
“It’s not a musical”, Wilko is at pains to establish. It is an “illustrated monologue”. There is more than a hint of self-deprecation and irony in Willis’ eye as he mockingly describes the evening’s structure. He treats the audience as a collective confidante, regaling us like old Canvey Island mates with his tales and philosophies, before jack-knifing back into the drama. He is surrounded by the cast depicting his fellow band members from Dr Feelgood, who are all equally adept at adopting other roles at the kick of a drum. In fact, we are a fair way into the show before we’re treated to the pivotal moment of the seventies, when Dr Feelgood “didn’t just usher in Punk, but fucking invented it!” (Wilko’s words). First, we learn a bit about the man of many contradictions, who pulses with opposites; quoting Shakespeare and Wordsworth in between the expletives, who rejects religion in favour of science, who sees the Mississippi Delta in the Thames Estuary. Who, in life, reconciles undying love and devotion to his infidelity and – in the face of death – manages to bring together Nirvana to Hades. The man who, having played the last notes of the last song of his final farewell gig, is granted a new lease of life.
Director Dugald Bruce-Lockhart’s staging is subconsciously ingenious, predominantly set against Nicolai Hart-Hansen’s rehearsal room backdrop, which morphs into a Camden music venue, an operating theatre, a working-class living room or the glowing Essex skyline with the aid of James Stokes’ lighting. The jumps back and forward in time are easy to follow, as are the many characters that the cast portray. Jon House has the charisma, voice and musicality to bring Dr Feelgood’s frontman, Lee Brilleaux, back to vivid life. David John, when not at the drumkit as ‘Big Figure’ (real name, John Martin) convincingly adopts many personas. Georgina Field is equally persuasive as ‘Sparko’ with her gender-swapped portrayal of the bassist who helped shape the raw rhythm and blues style sound of the band. Meanwhile Willis fully embraces the physicality and musicianship of Wilko; pacing and wide-eyed, wielding his guitar like a sniper.
But it’s not only about Dr Feelgood. That’s just part of the story. Wilko left the band in 1977. The conflicts with Brilleaux that led to the split are effectively dramatized, even extending beyond the grave. House, dressed in white, visits the redemptive Wilko, like Marley’s ghost. A reconciliation of sorts verges on the maudlin, but we are quickly brought back down to earth with more of Wilko’s pragmatic but poetic perspective. Our hearts truly ache at his sense of loss for Irene, whose own tragic death preceded his by a decade. Lara Lemon is a feisty Irene, often a fifth member of the band in spirit, but always the unwavering other half of Wilko.
Maitland’s play has been doing the rounds now for nearly three years after premiering at the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch in 2024. Wilko himself had sadly passed away before opening night, but he was instrumental in the creative process. But only in the sense that he endorsed pretty much all that Maitland had written. The appalling behaviour, the infidelities and the selfishness went unchallenged apparently: Wilko was always the first to admit his shortcomings. It was the rest of the world that acknowledged his genius (when he presented Elton John with a GQ magazine ‘Genius’ award, Elton gave it back to him saying “You’re the fucking genius here”). “Wilko: Love and Death and Rock ‘n’ Roll” corroborates the fact. It is fitting that there is no curtain call. Instead, an encore. Leaving us wanting more. “You don’t have to live forever” declared Wilko, borrowing another literary phrase to illustrate his own outlook; “You just have to live”. His legacy certainly lives on in this portrait of a life certainly lived to the full.
WILKO
Theatre Royal Windsor then UK Tour continues
Reviewed on 5th October 2026
by Jonathan Evans
Photography by Nick Haeffner
