John and Jen

Five years after it last appeared in London, Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald’s schmaltzy, all-American musical John and Jen has undergone an update.

In the original, John and Jen grow up together in a turbulent household in 1950s America. Twenty years later, Jen is caring for her baby boy, also named John, and suppressing some deep-rooted demons.

In Guy Retallack’s production, the story begins in the early 1980s, wrapping up in 2023. In theory, the shift should work – the Vietnam War can be easily swapped for Iraq – but the new reference points are sometimes clumsily communicated, especially when John (played with boyish enthusiasm by Lewis Cornay) reels off newspaper headlines, from Princess Diana’s death in 1997 to the 9/11 attacks.

As Jen, Rachel Tucker gives a masterclass performance in The Road Ends Here, eyes glinting under the stage lights as she gently massages Greenwald’s lyrics into a moment of heart-rending connection with the audience. She is more compelling as mother to a young son in the second act, than as an older teenage sister in the first, sliding naturally into the nurturing, maternal role.

There are moments that don’t quite convince, such as when Jen tells her 12-year-old brother he is old enough to stand on his own two feet, and others that are let down by simple design issues – when Jen pushes together storage boxes to make a coffin and drapes the US flag across the top, it is too low for most audience members to see.

Despite this, Natalie Johnson’s set design is charming and evocative, situating the action within the comforting confines of the loft of John and Jen’s family home. Boxes labelled ‘1985’, ‘1995’, ‘2003’ are piled high, a boyband poster adorns the wall and dusty family photo albums are stacked on a shelf. It is a room of memories and evidence of lives intimately bound together.