THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
If you are a diehard fan of the classic du Maurier neo-gothic thriller Rebecca and its subsequent classic Hitchcock adaptation, the latter of which I remember watching and enjoying a few years ago, then it is likely you will go to Charing Cross Theatre and see the new, campy-vampy, sumptuously executed musical adaptation and enjoy yourself.
Because as far as fan fiction goes, it feels pretty okay.
And it has all the ingredients to be pretty glorious.
Alejandro Bonatto's set is a bit dry ice and shadows, but given the psychological depth and darkness of the source materials that feels like it should work and does in setting the mood before curtain's up. The ensemble cast of Maximilian De Winter's servants are the highlight of the production, providing a spot of catty, upstairs/downstairs style joy in an otherwise fairly joyless – and not in the subversive, Byronic, Heathcliff/anti-heroic sort of way – Gothic mansion beside the treacherous and fathomless depths of the sea.
I do not know if former Neighbours star Kara Lane would have carried the show further. On the night I saw it Melanie Bright, Lane's understudy as the sinister, melodramatically malicious housekeeper Mrs Danvers was playing the role and outperforming every single other actor on stage. Based on Bright's strength of voice and the Halloweenish, Tim Burtonesque delight she seemed to take in the part, channeling her inner Bellatrix LeStrange and shaking the foundations of the theater with evocative musical incantations, I would be all for a rewrite called Mrs Danvers The Musical, as she was decidedly the most compelling presence on stage.
Lauren Jones is vocally talented; incredibly so as The Second Mrs De Winter, and maybe doing the best she could with an unwieldy script or sloppy directing on the part of Bonatto, but she begins so sickly sweet that her transformation into a figure of strength later in the narrative remains less plausible. She's not helped by having to act as a foil to an actor as robotic as Richard Carson – a Maxim De Winter who can barely seem to produce the rage that he can't contain in the famous masked ball scene.
None of the actors are helped by the script, which I had high hopes for having seemingly played to successful runs for over a decade. It is a new English translation from a German production and perhaps adapter Christopher Hampton and Michael Kunze lose some crucial potency when they abandon the language of Nietzsche for the language of pragmatism, for the lyrics seem to have taken the juice of poetry and wrung from it the drab backwash of predictable prose, seemingly robbing a Gothic tale of much of its beauty for what I can only guess is accessibility of popular theater.
I look forward to Ms Bright getting in contact for the spin-off, for which I will be happy to pen something more appropriately rich in linguistic imagery, but for this production I am afraid I have longer have any wish to dream of or return to Manderley.
