Book: Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schönberg
Music: Claude-Michel Schönberg
Lyrics: Alain Boublil, Annabel Mutale Reed and Paul Hodge
Director: Matthew Warchus
An undergraduate dissertation might explore the various iterations of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s gloomy musical Martin Guerre. It premiered in July 1996 as a grand, dance-heavy, three-hour spectacle set against the backdrop of French religious wars. Dodgy reviews saw subplots, protracted recitatives and a 20-minute cut later that year. A touring version a couple of years later added some spoken dialogue and cut another 15 minutes. The Old Vic’s outgoing artistic director, Matthew Warchus, slims the piece down again to a furiously fast-paced 90-minute tale of interrupted love. The singing is great, but the tone is relentlessly dark, and you may struggle to follow the story.
The piece takes place in the 1560s in a dystopian rural French village where everyone wears black, fears strangers, and sees witchcraft in every odd happening. This is not a happy place. Set and costume designer Rob Howell opens the in-the-round show with wooden benches, chairs, and witches’ brooms piled high into a bonfire, atop a sea of blood-red gravel, to make the point. Think The Handmaid’s Tale set 500 years in the past.
Young Martin (Dan Hand) is forced into an unwanted marriage with Young Bertrande (Bethan Louise Honer) by his scheming uncle Pierre (Mathew Craig). After seven weeks, the marriage remains unconsummated. “Don’t be so weak, get to work, there’s nine acres at stake,” Pierre tells his dithering nephew. Martin, an archetypal stroppy teen, has had enough and leaves to try his luck in the army (Howell gives us blue sashes, haze, and whirling flags), leaving the villagers fuming and Bertrande wondering what she has done wrong.
Fast forward seven years and the adult Bertrande (Liv Andrusier, boy can she sing) is still determined that her husband will return, a belief captured in the show’s best song, the anthemic ballad Some Day. The villagers think she is a “bride of Satan” whose curses have brought about a drought, and tie her to a table, presumably with the aim of sacrificing her.
Rescued at the last minute by the local priest, Father Dominic (Adam Pearce), Bertrande seems destined to be forced into marriage with the villainous Guillaume (Barney Wilkinson, snarling viperously). “Marry Guillaume and do your duty,” the villagers chant in church, stomping their wooden staffs against the floor with sharp, STOMP-like percussion. Even Bertrande’s mother, Madame de Rols (Caroline Sheen), thinks she should step up. Village simpleton Benoit (Colin Ryan), who is in love with a scarecrow, provides a moral counterpoint to the villagers’ mob mentality.
Out of the blue and much to Guillaume’s chagrin, the adult Martin (Shane O’Riordan) returns to seek out his wife. “He’s even better with extra hair,” someone says in a slice of Boublil and Schönberg’s trademark recitative between songs. Guillaume, whose words are underscored by sinister, tremulous violins, thinks Martin is an imposter and sets out to prove it. The rains come, the crops grow, and the villagers put it down to Martin’s fortuitous reappearance, leaving Guillaume a lone voice of dissent. Now happily in love, Martin and Bertrande have a child and lay claim to their nine acres.
Complications arise when a passing soldier tells Guillaume that Martin Guerre actually died in battle. The villagers take sides, and a Judge (Aaron Lee Lambert) is called in to adjudicate. Another man arrives, also claiming to be Martin (Alex James-Hatton). Our protagonists’ happiness and lives are at stake. Brief flashbacks to what seems to be a battlefield death scene do not entirely paper over some pressing holes in the plot.
Lizzi Gee’s choreography, folksy foot-stomping and faux village dance, delivers the goods. Warchus is great at marshalling his ensemble and using the space. The piece, however, really only sparks into life in the chemistry-rich duets between Andrusier’s gutsy Bertrande and O’Riordan’s sympathetic, honey-voiced Martin. One yearns for even a hint of comic relief to lighten the shade. Benoit threatens humour, but we really cannot laugh at a village idiot.
One wonders why Boublil and Schönberg are so driven to reinvent this show. Perhaps because it is always destined to be judged in comparison with the masterpiece that is Les Misérables: their imposter set next to the real thing. Whichever way you cut it, one is tempted to conclude that Martin Guerre is just not a particularly good musical. Standing ovations are baked into musical press nights nowadays. When nobody stirs, you have to ask yourself why.
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
Fast-paced revival.
