Louis de Bernières’s Greek island epic about love across the barricades was such a phenomenon in 1994 that the book’s blue-and-white cover is still instantly recognisable to many. Twenty-five years on, can this story of second world war island occupation still enchant or does it feel stuck in 90s aspic?
Director Melly Still manages to both stay faithful to the original and inject it with freshness, while Rona Munro’s adaptation distils key themes, especially the question of whether the “enemy-occupier” in a war is ever free to show love or compassion to the occupied. But the story now trades on spectacle, song, movement and music. This is not far from being Captain Corelli’s Mandolin: The Musical. Much of the emotional drama comes from these aspects and while this means that the weighty, winding narrative of the book is simplified, it feels more streamlined, albeit occasionally elliptical.
Mayou Trikerioti’s set does much to help create a sense of spectacle: a large screen made of jagged metal sheets frames scenes abstractly, whether it’s the swirl of a roiling sea, the white light of a firing squad or the blood-red spillages of war. The “barrages and thunderbolts of war” that De Bernières describes are captured so viscerally that dropping bombs, gunfire and the rumbling of an earthquake are felt literally as the sound shakes the ground beneath our feet. It is by turns shocking and wondrous.
The musical elements, when they come, leave you wishing for more, from the Verdi arias sung by Corelli’s soldiers to the tunes he plays on his mandolin. Sound is used imaginatively: a mother’s wail after her son dies morphs into song, sounding notes with a terrible beauty. The ensemble cast move in ways that verge on dance, and the animals are played by actors with charming physicality, especially Luisa Guerreiro’s brilliantly bleating goat.
These theatrical flourishes mean that the lovers, played by Alex Mugnaioni and Madison Clare, are not as rounded as they might be. Their relationship is no less moving but they forever strain against the romance of their roles and explore what remains of love “after the passion has burned away”.
This production is as much about the horror and powerlessness of war as it is about romance – and, in the end, it is the former that it captures best.
At Rose theatre, Kingston, until 12 May. Then touring.
