This theatrical version of the Jamaican film that introduced reggae to the world could come harder, a lot harder. But the next words in the song that gives the show its title aren’t the least apt. The production doesn’t “fall down hard” or, indeed, at all. When the all-black cast from the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, is swaying, swivelling and banging out Jimmy Cliff’s songs, the show is exhilarating. And when Perry Henzell’s book is giving us the tale of Ivan, “country bwoy” and aspiring reggae star, it’s never less than engaging.

Does the show overglamorise Rolan Bell’s Ivan, who comes to make his fortune in Kingston, gets into drug pushing and shoots dead two cops before he’s inadvertently betrayed by his girl Elsa and is himself killed in his shanty town hideaway? Given our thriving British gun culture, especially in the East End of London, that could be a worry. But no, you don’t object when you’re watching Kerry Michael’s ebullient production. As it proceeds to suggest, you might as well damn Robin Hood for resisting King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Still, there are problems. The movie created a strong sense of a corrupt society, where destitution is rife, the police take drug money and run protection rackets, and the record industry is a mafia that tries to destroy Ivan when he politely requests a few rights in his own music. But the stage version creates little if any sense of place or poverty. It’s left to Chris Tummings, playing the police chief, to introduce a bit of menace and brutality into the proceedings – and, excellent as he is, he ends up delivering pantomime threats (“Turn on the lights, I want to see them faces”) at the girls in the front row. But those girls were clapping in sheer joy at the end – and, in many ways, why not? The pretence is, after all, that we’re watching “ni-night”, a Jamaican wake that celebrates a dead person, in this case Ivan, nine days after death. This goes some way towards justifying the evening’s relaxed feel and perhaps even the casual meandering of the prolonged flashback that constitutes the narrative itself. Also, it’s hard to resist Bell’s warm, outgoing Ivan, especially when he appears in the costume that proclaims his all-too-brief success: white cap, striped trousers, leather waistcoat, cowboy boots.

He puts across the songs with terrific verve, his natural tenor sometimes escalating into a feverish falsetto, but then so do Joanna Francis’s Elsa and the rest of the cast. You’ll hear You Can Get It if You Really Want and Sitting in Limbo and many others, among them the superb The Harder They Fall itself. Moreover, you can join in the singing and dancing at the curtain call: not something possible when you’re seeing the film in the cinema or likely when you’re watching the DVD at home.

Box office: 020-7638 8891

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette