Is it me or has a huge flood of ‘jukebox’ musicals suddenly come bobbing into the West End? Because it would seem that everyone from Robin Gibb to Barry Evans is preparing to have a crack…

Further to the reports that Chesney ‘The One and Only’ Hawkes will be heading up a new musical based on the songs of Barry Manilow, we can announce that I’d Do Anything finalist Francesca Jackson will flank Hawkes’s ‘Tony’ with her portrayal of ‘Lucy’.

Named after Manilow’s 1978 corker Can’t Smile Without You, this new musical is the latest in a long, long line of shows dedicated to the oeuvre of a celebrated songsmith. Buddy Holly, Debbie Harry, Frankie Valli; they’ve all been pasted into West End musicals of late to, it must be said, varying degrees of success.

Unlike the classy biographical approach of say Jersey Boys, Can’t Smile Without You has tried to emulate the mega hit Mamma Mia by making up a new story and characters to fit around the songs. This, naturally, can be a touch fiddly as it consists of basically threading the narrative through a succession of unhelpfully scattered song-shaped needles.

Can’t Smile Without You is about a band on a visit to New York. Fronted by the… well, I was going to say “ever-youthful Chesney Hawkes”, but looking at the poster, which has been raggedly airbrushed to within an inch of it’s sorry little life, he looks practically new born. Anyway, Chesney and his rag-tag bunch of musos hit the Big Apple; whilst they are there they trip headlong into a chance-of-a-lifetime audition for a new reality TV pop sensation. It’s not explained why they’d need to go all the way to America to audition for something like that; not when the civic centre in Luton is booked out just about every other fortnight to host X Factor tryouts or the Fame Academy entrance exam. But still, Chesney and the gang give it their all…

The TV company love Hawkes but see him as a solo star… I suppose that’s because he’s been telling people he’s the one and only; anyway, the band give him their blessing and off he pops on his own. Before ‘Tony’ can realise his dream though, he’s caught up, and I quote, “in a tragic sequence of events that leaves him fighting for his life.”

Stripped of his memory, Hawkes’s dreams are left in tatters. Only his passion for his music is what keeps him going. That and, of course, his love for a mysterious girl he once knew called… yes, you guessed it, ‘Mandy’.

“Bam! I am the One and Only!…

So there it is: Can’t Smile opens in Bromley and then tours Manchester, Liverpool, Hull and Glasgow.

Can’t Smile? Can’t wait. What do you think? think it’ll be another Mamma Mia? Or flop like the immediately forgotten Lennon… what you’ve not heard of it either?