Rebecca – Charing Cross Theatre, London

Book and Lyrics: Michael Kunze, based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier

Translation: Christopher Hampton and Michael Kunze

Music: Sylvester Levay

Director: Alejandro Bonatto

Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca is a psychological thriller in which the unnamed narrator, having impetuously married the debonair Maxim de Winter, arrives at his country estate Manderlay to find herself perpetually overshadowed by the lingering memory of his first wife, Rebecca.

The story has been adapted into plays, a TV series and films, with the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock adaptation remaining the exemplar of how to transfer the oppressive claustrophobia of the first-person narrative onto a wider canvas.

This musical adaptation, originally created in German, premiered in 2006 in Vienna. An English language version looked to be heading to Broadway in 2012, but the tale surrounding its finances – involving fake investors, a fraud conviction, and the show’s publicist warning potential backers not to invest – overshadowed the tale itself, and by the time all its woes were untangled the producers lost the rights.

So now the Charing Cross Theatre gets to host the English language debut, with a new translation by Christopher Hampton and the show’s original book writer and lyricist, Michael Kunze.

Lauren Jones, as the Second Mrs. de Winter, is referred to as “I” in the programme, in reference to the first-person narrative of the book. That’s an epithet that doesn’t really fit in this theatrical piece where the character is no longer the eyes through which the psychodrama unfolds. Instead, the character’s mouse-like diffidence is from without rather than within as we watch Mrs. de Winter intimated by the Manderlay household, especially its imperious housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Kara Lane) and the unseen force of Rebecca’s memory.

In widening out the story, we get songs from the points of view of both Lane’s Mrs. Danvers and Richard Carson as Maxim – the latter appearing sullen and withdrawn upon return to Manderlay, where in the show’s opening scenes (set in Monte Carlo) has seemed light and dashing. And while this is understandable as a musical, it does somewhat rob the story of the power of du Maurier’s original. The songs also hold back vital parts of the characters’ motivations – out of necessity maybe so that the mystery of Rebecca’s death, and Maxim’s possible hand in it, can remain in place until a series of revelations in Act II. However, that means that the characters’ big Act 1 set pieces unsatisfactorily let us only halfway in.

Despite that, Lane makes for a menacing presence as the black-clad housekeeper whose obsessive love for her previous mistress leads her to force the second Mrs. de Winter into acts set to deliberately antagonise her husband with memories of his first wife. It all makes for a rather miserable experience, even when enlivened with the arrival of Maxim’s sister Bea (Sarah Harlington), whose portrayal of a stereotypical carefree member of the landed gentry enlivens a rather dull characterisation on paper.

Throughout, what helps the show is Sylvester Levay’s music, working with a 19-piece band under the musical direction of Robert Scott. The creation of a new offstage “orchestra pit” – the theatre’s disused bar at the back of the auditorium – allows for a larger orchestra than many West End productions, and it certainly pays off in the richness of the sound.

The lyrics fare less well. Part of this may be down to the act of re-translating into English songs which were written in German from du Maurier’s source material, but Hampton and Kunze’s work wavers between trite and melodramatic. Verses seem to change their mind about whether or not to include rhymes midway. While such decisions do in some way play into the disorienting experience that Mrs. de Winter feels while at Manderlay, one suspects that such an effect was not intentional.

Nicky Shaw’s set, which struggles to portray the Art Deco opulence of playboy city Monte Carlo or the Cornish majesty that Manderlay is supposed to represent, is overshadowed somewhat by the occasional use of projection work, the crashing waves dominating just as the drowned Rebecca looms large over her former domain.

Even with that, the psychological aspects of du Maurier’s work are replaced by melodrama that rarely manages to engage to the degree that the book, or Hitchcock’s film, managed so brilliantly. While the German language original has been lauded, one fears that its London version may be better one day lost to the waves.

Continues until 18 November 2023