Book: Jonathan Prince
Music and Lyrics: Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett and Steve Robson
Director: Georgie Rankcom
Based on a 1940s play by Howard Richardson, this new musical is a hybrid affair featuring Country and Western songs for the townspeople living in Buck Creek, set in the Appalachians and heavy Rock numbers for the witches and Conjur people who live invisibly alongside the humans. For the duets between the two lovers – inevitably, one witch and one human – we have more familiar musical theatre tunes. It just about works, but other aspects of this supernatural show are less successful.
Most of the issues result from the witches’ world, who live mostly above the dull, but functional, set of wooden shacks that make up Bucks Creek. While the townspeople’s dances are energetic, brimming with hoedowns and fiddles, especially lively in the first ensemble number, Ordinary Life, the witches, under Jane McMurtrie’s choreography, look like a cheap version of Legs and Co, dressed as 80s band Toto Coelo. Never has sexy dancing been so unsexy. And it doesn’t help that, as they strut and prance, they have to sing too, fighting to be heard over the electric guitar.
Fortunately, life below is better to listen to, and as Barbara Allen, the young woman who falls in love with John, a male witch, Lauren Jones is in fine voice, full of emotional cracks, especially in the superior number Wildflower. Jones also sounds a bit like Sinéad O’Connor in the strange but mesmerising Unthinkable. Her duets with John (the capable Glen Adamson has to sing both Rock and Country) are delights, particularly Maybe.
In contrast, Josie Benson as Conjur Woman has to powerhouse through each of her tracks, leaving nuance behind in the dust. Attacking all the songs in this way lessens the impact of Play Dirty in the second half, which could be a showstopper if we hadn’t heard Benson let loose earlier.
The songs are good, and so they should be, coming from Lindy Robbins, Dave Bassett and Steve Robson. American Robbins has written for Dua Lipa and Jason Derulo, among many others. Bassett’s biggest hit was Fight Song by Rachel Platten, while the English Robson has scored many of Ollie Murs’s hits as well as songs by One Direction and Take That.
Director Georgie Rankcom, who is behind the marvellously funny Oh, Mary! at the Trafalgar Theatre, struggles to do anything with the tepid comedy in Jonathan Prince’s book. Wills Mercado, as Barbara Allen’s brother, carries most of the jokes, but they are mainly unimaginative and only receive a perfunctory response from the audience. Dark of the Moon is also long, 15 minutes shy of three hours, and its length is at odds with all the action that arrives in Act Two, set some months after Barbara Allen and John first meet.
The original play’s themes of paganism and adultery have caused controversy in the United States over the years, particularly as it was often presented in schools. However, with its ideas of interracial marriage, dual heritage babies who are whisked away and mob violence, Dark of the Moon could also be seen as an allegory for a racially segregated America, although this production never leans into this reading. The witches here are very much witches. And for once, the Devil doesn’t have the best music.
Runs until 8 August 2026
