Screen classic takes flight as a funky fable of Kingston

As the band build up the driving reggae skank of Toots and the Maytals' Funky Kingston, the stage bustles to life and in one comic vignette a banana is brandished like a gun.

- Chris Wiegand

Later in the show, real pistols will be drawn - one in each hand, as in the iconic poster for the 1972 movie.

Part of the phenomenal achievement of this musical adaptation is how the story is propelled from sun-kissed comedy to elegiac tragedy with the same front-footed energy as that opener, one of several reggae standards bolstering the film’s genre-defining soundtrack.