SOUTHAMPTON gets soul next week as hit musical The Commitments brings the sound of 80s Dublin to the Mayflower stage.

Expect 20 soul classics, including River Deep Mountain High, Mustang Sally, Reach Out and I Heard It Through The Grapevine, performed live on stage in this sensational show, based on the Oscar nominated and BAFTA award-winning film classic and adapted from the novel by Roddy Doyle.

The scene is set - it's Dublin 1986 and the world’s hardest working soul band is on the edge of greatness.

The feel good celebration of soul is the story of Jimmy Rabbitte, played by Andrew Linnie, a young working class music fan, who shapes an unlikely bunch of amateur musicians and friends into an amazing live act, the finest soul band Dublin has ever produced.

The show follows the journey of two members of a frustrated synthesizer band – the opening scene we find them playing but being ignored in a shop window – who turn to Jimmy, the local music expert, for help. Placing a classified advert in a music paper, Jimmy auditions a number of wannabes before finalising the new line up who he names The Commitments.

Brian Gilligan channels his inner James Brown as frontman Deco. having won the promotion in unusual fashion.

"It's a pretty good story," he laughs. "I went from being third cover to leading man while playing Billy, the drummer. The assistant director heard me backstage in the theatre stairwell wailing away to myself one day when I was going up to the dressing room. When I found out, I thought I'd embarrassed myself, but I was called in to cover Deco and a couple of months down the line I was playing him every night!"

While most of the cast are Irish, including sisters Leah and Amy Penston as Imelda and Natalie, the most famous face in the cast is an Englishman - ex-Coronation Street favourite Kevin Kennedy whose comedy one-liners and witty retorts as Da have the audience in stitches throughout.

He said: "It's a joy this show. My Mum was born here (in Dublin) and my family are Dubs (Dublin people). I was brought here on holiday as a kid and my Mum came here to see me in the show. It was part of the reason I took the gig.

"I'm a big fan of Roddy Doyle and when I first read the book 25 years ago, I was interested in the language and the humour. I've had a lot of help with the accent from the rest of the cast.

"The film is brilliant and the show is brilliant, but it's a very different kind of experience. The story is the same though and all the favourite lines from the film are in the show. It's the story of a bunch of normal young people doing something really extraordinary."

Tickets for The Commitments, which runs from Tuesday to Saturday, are available by calling 023 8071 1811 or visiting mayflower.org.uk.