Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charlotte Jones’ musical based on the Victorian blockbuster novel misfired in London’s West End in 2004. The show makes free with Wilkie Collins’ convoluted tale of dastardly deeds and unlawful imprisonment, with a resourceful heroine, Marian, seeking justice for her lost half-sister, Laura. It transforms the novel into something far more tasteful and far less disturbing. Like a BBC costume drama, the show is nicely dull, perfectly pleasant and completely inoffensive.
Thom Southerland’s revival is an intimate affair, treating Lloyd Webber’s score like the chamber opera that it is. At its best, the score borrows from both Benjamin Britten and Gilbert and Sullivan; at worst, Lloyd Webber simply borrows from himself. There is an eerily effective sequence as the doomed Laura goes to her wedding with the depraved Sir Percival Glyde (Chris Peluso), who only wants her money. The strains of The Holly and the Ivy pile on the foreboding.
There are a couple of pleasing comic numbers, most notably the witty You Can Get Away With Anything, which is delivered by Greg Castiglioni’s dubious Count Fosco with brilliant timing and seductive irony. Some of the other performances are eye-catching and vocally impressive too. They are the reason to see this show and serve as a reminder of the UK’s increasingly deep pool of talented musical theatre actors.
It’s a shame that Lloyd Webber and Jones turned Collins’ proto-feminist Marian into a more mundane standard-issue romantic heroine. But Carolyn Maitland sings with texture and gives the character definition. Anna O’Byrne’s Laura captures the tempestuous emotions of being surprised by love and the depression that accompanies despair.
However, too often the score and production mistake the overwrought for genuine emotion. You never really care for the characters. Southerland piles on the gothic atmosphere to good if never quite spine-tingling effect – not helped by a pair of sliding panels that aid the production’s fluidity but prove increasingly distracting.
Despite the performances, this tale of passion, madness and murder comes across as competent rather than thrilling. The story makes great play of the secrets of the grave but this isn’t the resurrection that Lloyd Webber’s musical requires.
- At Charing Cross theatre, London, until 10 February. Book here 08444 930 650.
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