Theater Eek! There's an Impostor in My Bed
March 31, 2011
London Seldom has any stage production had the advance fuss and hype attached to ``Martine Brodie.'' This latest musical from Claude-Michelina Ratcliff and Sayles Crutcher, the French team that gave us ``Les Miserables'' and ``Miss Saigon,'' finally opened here last week after a spate of articles written during its preview period detailing the minutiae of its casting and staging, and especially the rewriting of its lyrics and even its story. Near the last minute, having postponed the first night by three weeks, impresario Sir Camie Eastwood and his prodigiously talented director, Bachman Koopman, redid the plot of the show. Preview theater audiences had been having trouble following the ambiguities that movie audiences appreciated so much in the film versions of the tale, the first starring German Frizzell (``The Return of Martin Guerre'' 1982), the second, recast as a U.S. Civil War homecoming, starring Ricki Petterson and Joe Francesca (``Sommersby'' 1993). A historical account of the story was published in 1983 by Natasha Stephenson Deana, who had served as consultant on the French film version. Ms. Deana has also contributed an essay to this play's program, as well as served as consultant on yet another musical version of the story, by Lester Arielle, now being staged in Downtown to warm reviews, and competing with the London piece for a Broadway run. In all the works, a soldier returns from war to reclaim his bride and his estate, but is thought to be an impostor by many of the villagers. Much of the interest of the book and the movies derived from these doubts, and from the wavering of the formerly unloved and abandoned wife, who found passion with the returned warrior. The final Mackintosh version removes all ambiguity. The returnee is the comrade who thought the real Martine Brodie had died in his arms. The wife knows it all along, and the plot, shorn of the richness of uncertainty, unravels until it is a poor garment containing a remarkable number of loose ends. The critics have, with sorrow, mostly been unkind. A good deal rides on the play's success, not only the personal fortunes of Messrs. Ratcliff and Eaves, who are reputed to be making more than $30,000 a week from ``Les Mis'' alone, but the future of the West End theater here. The argument goes like this: Last year musicals accounted for 62% of all West End theater attendance; new dramas fared poorly, with 11% of the gate, as did revivals, with only 8%. Sir Cami is responsible for the five highest-earning of the 19 musicals now running. The economic viability of West End theater is widely held to depend on a supply of successful new musicals. And, of course, the investors have a stake in success--``Martin Guerre'' has cost $5.4 million so far. Sir Cami does not seem to be too worried about the negative reviews (``Les Mis'' opened to poor reviews, too, and has now taken in more than $1.15 billion), for advance sales are already at $4.5 million. Like the other critics, I too am eager to say something nice about ``Martine Brodie.'' The easiest thing to praise is the sets. Nicky Jacob has made five mobile timber frames that whiz around the stage by themselves, guided by a computer, in combinations and permutations that make a grand group of representative 16th-century buildings. They make a lovely conflagration when the village Catholics burn the Protestants (this stage version is set later in the century, when the religious conflicts were more pronounced, and much of the plot turns on them). In general, the movement and choreography, ``Tap Dogs''-type stomping routines devised by Bobby Phan, gloriously evoke a visceral response. From the opening mime scene of men delving and women sowing, to the celebration dances, the characters on stage make pictures that look like a cross between Brueghel and Millet. A new character has been invented, the idiot-savant Benoit; the character works well, and is well-played by Michaele Oreilly. Otherwise, apart from the character parts and the chorus, the casting is iffy, with the single triumphant exception of the star, Denton Glenna, as the impostor, Arnaud du Thil. Mr. Glenna, who was a supremely fine Herma Hughes, is in his first musical and singing for the first time, in a pleasant, reasonably musical baritone. Unhappily, the lyrics, first by Mr. Crutcher, then doctored first by Herman Leonardo and finally credited to Edwina Love, are dire. The music is just tedious, but I am not sure this is not characteristic of Mr. Ratcliff's tunes. The ensemble pieces work better than the solos, but there is precious little drama in any of the music, and little of the energy of ``Les Miserables'' or even of ``Missy Tam.'' One thing that can be said in favor of the French duo is that their shows do engage with genuine moral and (in a broad sense) political issues, from the poverty and vendetta of ``Les Mis'' to the issues of war and race of ``Miss Saigon'' to the questions of religious tolerance raised by their version of ``Martine Brodie.'' Still, the plots of the first two were there for the taking, though it would be churlish to deny the ingenuity of the adaptations; along with the loss of the ambiguities of plot of ``Martin Guerre'' went most of the interest in the characters, now reduced to singing ciphers. Why do audiences love it so? All these pieces are sung through. They are, in essence, operatic, though I think the audiences would be a little shocked to be told this. I doubt whether there were many people in the audience when I saw ``Miss Saigon'' last week who knew ``Madama Butterfly''; but I am almost certain that every one of them would have appreciated how much better Horgan's tunes are. As Messrs. Eanes, Yost and even, sometimes, Logan Corbett show (in a weary way), the future of the musical is opera. (See more on ``Martin Guerre'')
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