| Excellent production and fine score |
At Wales Theatre Company |
| Wales Theatre Company- The Thorn Birds , Swansea Grand Theatre , April 27, 2009 |
In its day The Thorn Birds was a best-seller of Da Vinci Code proportions. In fact if you take that book’s Catholic background, throw in some Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, a liberal dash of Catherine Cookson and then set it all in the Australian outback, you may get a little idea of the novel’s steamy atmosphere. Even more people lapped it up when the story of a woman’s forbidden love for a priest was dished up as a television mini-series.Now it arrives on stage as a musical, and, like Caesar’s Gaul, my review can be divided into three parts, words, music and production. I don’t like starting with a negative but frankly the book and lyrics, by the novel’s original author, Colleen McCullough, are at best serviceable and at worst awful. Time and again great clunky chunks of narrative descend with the wooden weight of the falling branch that provides a crucial plot development. The lyrics are even worse. Most of the songs suffer from being statements that tell, not emotions that allow you to feel. That’s a great pity because those words don’t flatter the music and Gloria Bruni’s score is really very good indeed, it’s also superbly played by the on-stage musicians. It’s an eclectic score taking in the formality of the ballroom, the ritual of the Catholic Church, robust folk songs, abstract sounds that paint atmospheric pictures and emotional ballads. If there’s nothing that you actually come out whistling, there are always tunes and textures that entrance or move. Michael Bogdanov’s production is also very fine. His designer, Sean Crowley, has created a set which, with the use of superbly three-dimensional projected backdrops, can flow easily from one scene to another, often to spectacular effect. This enables events to move at as rapid a rate as the words will allow and which do in the second half achieve the momentum of inevitable disaster. The company work well to create the communities and families that play out the melodrama. The two leads give a strong sense of the tainted relationship at the core. Matthew Goodgame is a finer singer than an actor and his slightly stiff delivery suits Father Ralph’s buttoned-up character. Helen Anker’s Meggie is outstanding. She gives us a willful woman whose impulsive actions bring disaster and her singing is magical. To see her sing and dance through So Many Nights, her seduction song in a bar full of heavy drinkers, is to see a true musical star in action. The costumes by David Emanuel and Holly McCarthy allow the years to pass with subtle changes and greatly help Llinos Daniel’s excellent portrait of a woman growing older as the mother who sees Meggie for what she is. Peter Karrie is a strong presence as the Cardinal who narrates the whole thing; unfortunately he’s also stuck with some of the clunkiest lyrics. The excellent production and fine score can’t quite turn this melodramatic tosh into great theatre but they do at least get it to the state of being watchable and enjoyable, in spite of the words. |
Reviewed by: Victor Hallett |
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