Book: Jon Kaplan, Al Kaplan and Hunter Bell
Music and Lyrics: Jon Kaplan and Al Kaplan
Director: Christopher Gattelli
Taking Jonathan Demme’s famous thriller of 1991, The Silence of the Lambs, turning it into a musical and then, also, making it funny, seems like an impossible task, but the American brothers Jon and Al Kaplan have delivered with aplomb. Although, with Jodie Foster’s strange accent, some unforgettable bad-taste lines and a preposterous story, the Kaplans certainly start on a strong foundation. Most surprisingly, as presented in this new production at the friendly Turbine Theatre, is how loyal the musical sticks to the original story, delighting fans of the film.
Phoebe Panaretos is excellent as Clarice, the rookie FBI agent, called in to interview the infamous killer Hannibal Lecter. She absolutely nails Foster’s gurgled West Virginia accent throughout and the audience never tires when Panaretos overemphasises any words beginning with S, even randomly reciting the ‘she sells sea shells on the sea-shore’ tongue-twister at one point.
All of Clarice’s classic scenes are rendered in the Turbine’s inventive musical. There she is shooting targets with a gun, mufflers on her ears, and there she is stalking nervously down a corridor of prison cells on her way to interrogate Lecter, and there she is crouching in darkness while Buffalo Bill, wearing night-vision goggles, stalks her in the dark. Each scene is not only a parody of the film, but an homage too.
Director Christopher Gattelli makes best use of a small stage with a series of moveable panels revealing the action. A chorus of singers and dancers wearing cute little lamb ears on their heads and hoofs on their arms intervene at all the right times. The creepy relationship between Clarice and Lecter is reimagined as an Argentine tango while Buffalo Bill’s history is presented as a vaudeville number. Each song, a mixture of American country and army cadences, is perfect for the story, and they never, apart from the intentionally sloppy My Daughter Is Catherine, venture into the territory of anodyne musical theatre.
Despite this musical first being produced online in 2003, Silence! The Musical feels fresher than the corpse that Clarice examines. There have been some updates too; Mark Oxtoby’s genuinely scary Lecter makes references to the five most recent Prime Ministers and, bizarrely, even manages to lever in a Jane Macdonald joke. Camp and always hilarious, these revisions only make the musical better.
The low-tech props – pointed fingers for guns, a baseball helmet for a muzzle, a cuddly toy for Buffalo Bill’s dog – are all wonderful details that prove you don’t need a big West End budget to find success. And unlike the smell that Lecter’s prison mate can smell as Clarice walks past him, this show smells of success.
Runs until 28 September 2024
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