It’s karaoke night at The Young Vic and Che Walker’s theme is love. In what sometimes feels like a rolling X-Factor audition, Been So Long is set in a run-down Soho bar with some run-down regulars, all of them looking for love and dying to sing about it. It is when the singing stops that the show sags – this is a company of great singers but dodgy actors - and without Arthur Davrill’s music for support, the characters wilt and fade. No amount of sassy screaming or feisty singing can bring them back to life again – the music’s got soul but the play has no heart.

Walker’s Frontline was a success because he packed his piece with so many exuberant characters and so much outright chaos that the bustle on stage hid the play’s shortcomings. Frontline didn’t have any real characters either – but it did have life. With only five roles in Been So Long, there is less to hide behind and Walker’s punchy but sweeping writing feels over-exposed. It just isn’t good enough, and though he conjures up a few startling images with some standout poetical monologues, lots of the script feels like filler. The dialogue grows perfunctory – an interlude between the music – with lines like ‘People change Simone, even you.’ leading to, yes, a song about change.

The only one to make something of his role is Harry Hepple – a talented, flexible actor, who is making a name for himself with consistently edgy but warm performances. He plays the show’s thug with a heart, starting out as a hoody with a score to settle and ending up as a soppy, love-struck romantic. Whilst it feels like the other actors are desperately trying to make something – anything – out of their roles, Hepple has fun with his part; he is frightening one moment, cuddly the next and pitch perfect throughout. Hepple teases the audience and earns their trust, playing around with conventions and - in one nicely timed moment – reaches for his gun, only to produce a microphone and burst into song.

Hepple’s performance works because he doesn’t take the show or his part that seriously. The other actors should’ve done the same, but waste a lot of time trying to reach an emotional pitch this script cannot provide. The declarations of love fall flat because the lovers barely speak to each other and just singing isn’t enough. The characters’ conversions seem fatuous, since the roles weren’t defined in the first place so it’s pretty hard to notice the difference. Thank God they can sing.

Walker has talent but it was never going to be unearthed in this type of show. The actors have charm but they belong in straight musicals and not this musical play. And although The Young Vic’s programming shows guts, it needs to make sure its shows have the goods to back these gutsy choices.

Till 15 July 2009