You don’t have to be a reggae fan to appreciate the energy in The Harder They Come, based on Perry Henzell’s 1972 cult film that featured Jimmy Cliff as Ivanhoe Martin, the rural Jamaican who comes to Kingston to make his mark in the music world and ends up in a world of drug trafficking and murder. 

The stage play, a hit in London, uses the tunes from the movie in a powerful way. Much of it sung, the production uses familiar songs like (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher, Rivers Of Babylon and Day-O to drive the action forward, sometimes with an ironic twist: a choral group sings Wonderful World, Beautiful People as corrupt policemen beat Ivan (Rolan Bell) because he refuses to play by their rules.

That’s followed by a fine segue in which the injured Ivan makes his way to the recording studio to lay tracks for the title song, an indomitable statement about justice. Energized by the words and the music, he grows into a confident figure who stands up against oppressors; it’s the first step in Ivan’s development into a revolutionary folk hero.

We know the end of the tale at its start: Ivan is memorialized at a celebratory wake. But co-directors Dawn Reid and Kerry Michael and choreographer Jackie Guy stage the musical numbers so effectively that we’re drawn into each chapter of Ivan’s story. Still, the show might not be so compelling without a central performer like the long-legged, limber Bell, who puts his incandescent smile and fine voice to good use.

He gets good support from Joanna Francis as his religious girlfriend Elsa, who chooses to follow Ivan rather than her manipulative preacher guardian (Victor Romero Evans), and Ivan’s drug dealer associate Pedro (Lain Gray); both are fine singers who can belt out a song but also pull their sound way down and give it emotional weight.

The second act could use stronger character development, and the actors’ thick patois will be a problem for some viewers. Even so, the drive of the action and especially the music make the production a crowd-pleaser, both in the telling of the tale and in the company’s greatest-hits reprise at the end.