Theatre Review: Candide - Menier Chocolate Factory ✭✭✭✭
CANDIDE
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| Photo by Nobby Clark |
MENIER CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Review by Sebastian Petit
3rd December 2013: Poor “Candide” is, I fear, always
destined to be the poor cousin to “West Side Story”. Compared with the
faultless clockwork of the latter “Candide” is based on a sprawling, satirical
novel which deliberately eschews any narrative thread or logic. Characters die
horrible deaths yet smilingly reappear a few pages later, the hero’s journeying
defies any geographical sense and, worst, the show’s accumulated revisions and
additions are so numerous that, if performed complete, would probably rival
“Parsifal” in length (if not in musical genius). Any director coming to the
work is faced with a choice of either trying to impose a disciplined narrative
thread on the work (don’t bother: it’s impossible) or just cheerfully going
with the flow and asking the audience to accept twists and turns and constant
character demise and resurrection. Judging from some of the whispers around me
this was a step too far for some.
Director Matthew White, already with
a strong Menier pedigree, wisely decided on the cheerful acceptance route and
framed the action within a strolling theatre company setting. It’s a bit of a
hoary old device but, in this case, works well. I was less happy with the in
the round audience configuration. This imposition, intended to be involving and
embracing, only works if all the audience are prepared to make the investment
in full concentration. Unfortunately this was clearly asking far too much of
many of the punters opposite me - Never have I been so painfully aware of so
much fidgeting and shifting about. I’d particularly like to thank the gentleman
in the front row who yawned hugely, without any attempt at concealment, at the
start of the sublime “Make our garden grow” finale.
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| Scarlett Strallen (Cunegonde) Photo by Nobby Clark |
The Menier had assembled a
strong, mainly unstarry, cast who made up a genuine ensemble, playing
everything from monks to ship figureheads. The two big names are James Dreyfus
as the eternally optimistic, blinkered Pangloss and also playing his polar
opposite, Martin and, for good measure, Cacambo. Dreyfus doesn’t quite have the
verbal snap, crackle and pop of the best interpreters but the loss of “Dear
boy”, one of the wittiest lyrics in the show, was a cruel cut and deprived his
character of a chance to shine in act 1. Scarlett Strallen, on the other hand,
brought the house down with “Glitter and be gay”. In her hands what can be
either an empty showpiece (see various opera stars’ renditions) or a duck-for-cover
vocal trial by high note was a perfectly integrated, utterly dazzling triumph.
The high point of the evening for me. Strallen also managed to keep the
audience onside throughout the show, even when behaving appallingly. In many
ways her Cunegonde is as much an innocent as Candide which makes the final
resolution more believable than usual.
Candide, as a character, is so
infernally cheerful and naïve that, in the wrong hands, one’s storng impulse is
to slap some sense into him. Fra Fee, more than any Candide of my experience,
made the character sympathetic and even believable. As a result his moment of
truth “Nothing more than this” was convincing and moving and his final
acceptance of Cunegonde as a person as opposed to an ideal brought the evening
to a satisfying conclusion.
I was less taken with Jackie
Clune’s Old Lady partly, I think, because she looked nothing of the kind. She
performed all the numbers with panache but the character remained elusive. Also
David Thaxton, a superlative Giorgio in the Donmar’s “Passion”, was wasted as
Maximilian however much fun he might have been having. In a very hardworking ensemble
I would have to mention Cassidy Janson’s cheerfully sluttish Paquette and Ben
Lewis vocally splendid and slyly hilarious as a succession of Candide’s
nemeses.
Not a perfect evening by any
means, but that may well not be possible with this work.
4 stars ✭✭✭✭
Candide runs at Menier Chocolate Factory until February 22nd 2014
