Book: Tim Luscombe
Music and Lyrics: Matthew Wilder
Director: David Gilmore
Tim Luscombe and Matthew Wilder’s new musical Stiletto, premiering at Charing Cross Theatre has a huge amount of fun with the personalities and liberties of eighteenth-century Venetian life involving a much-desired castrato, the soprano daughter of African slaves, haughty noblemen, sarcastic priests, temperamental artists and foppish attendants. Wilder’s Disney experience is evident in the range of entertainingly conversational songs while Ceci Calf’s set design evokes grand houses, piazzas and eventually the opera house. Yet Stiletto struggles for clear plot and purpose to bring these sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting, elements together.
Once a working-class boy castrated and sold to singing teacher Faustino, the now adult Marco impresses a countess, Assura D’Orozco, who takes him into her household as performer and lover where Marco hopes to meet the manager of the famous opera house where his career can really soar. But meeting Gioia in the town, Marco is charmed by her voice although their path to acceptance has many twists and turns.
Stiletto has a really strong premise following the fortunes of the young singer whose questioning masculinity forms the spine of the show, and there is real promise in the romantic as well as musical allure that has several characters lusting after him. The attractiveness of his talent and how it is used by others to exploit Marco could be further explored particularly when sexual favours are exchanged for access to higher-status people with tones of Tom Jones and Casanova while a currently untapped internal strand could focus more on Marco’s frustrations at being reduced to a voice, perhaps even just a conquest.
It would also better underpin the indifferent love story in which two nice people fall in love at first sight but barely speak after that by building up the personalities of the two characters to recognise their purity of heart, even if they commit plenty of bodily sins to stay on the right side of a precarious society. Marco especially needs more texture; later in the show another character actually dies of love for him, the Countess risks her reputation and Gioia (Jewelle Hutchinson) clings on innocently, all for a man the audience hardly comes to know. Luscombe and Wilder need to make his appeal even more substantial to underpin his attraction to both sexes.
The rest of the story takes a little while to settle, meandering along until a soapy twist just before the interval gives a bit of shape to the second half. With scenes set across social classes, Stiletto struggles for tone, sometimes almost a spoof of the super-rich, a courtroom drama and a desperately earnest love story but some streamlining of the plot and a clear understanding of where the main jeopardy lies for the central character would help.
There is also lots of really good stuff here and visually, this is one of the grander affairs seen at Charing Cross Theatre with Anna Kelsey’s excellent costumes even bearing front-row scrutiny. Jack Chambers is a very likeable Marco and there is more to find in the character’s sexual openness as well as his political frustrations about sanctioned castration, while Kelly Hampson almost steals the show as the Countess Azurra consuming every song to leave you wanting more. And that’s the challenge for the Stiletto team, there is so much more to prise from the characters in this show and the price they are all willing to pay for fame.
Runs Until 14 June.
