Music and Lyrics: Stephen Schwartz
Book: Joseph Stein, based on a film by Marcel Pagnol and Jean Giono
Director: Gordon Greenberg
“You’re not a waitress any more,” old baker Aimable tells his young wife Geneviève, not soon after they have arrived in the picturesque 1930s Provencal village of Concord. That line may well have been in Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein’sThe Baker’s Wifesince its first aborted US tryouts in 1976. With Lucie Jones as the titular baker’s wife, though, it feels especially pointed: she played Jenna inWaitressbefore its West End run was cut short by the pandemic, reprising the role later for its UK tour.
A critical difference between the two works is that, despite being the title character in both pieces, Jones ends up with a supporting role here. While the generation-gap marriage between Geneviève and Clive Rowe’s kind-hearted – amiable, even – Aimable is the pivot around which the action hangs, Stein’s book (adapted from the 1938 French filmLa Femme du Boulanger) is rather more interested in the people of Concord. It’s a motley crew of bickering archetypes, the strongest of which are the café owners (Josefina Gabrielle and Norman Pace).
Among those residents is Joaquin Pedro Valdes as the handsome Dominique, who fixates on Geneviève and is determined to run away with her. Valdes’s solo number,Proud Lady, is delivered with raunchy, sexual choreography by Matt Cole, marking Dominique as very different from the otherwise buttoned-down villagers. It also makes the character’s behaviour all the more creepy: Dominique is not a guy to understand that no means no, instead taking Geneviève’s persistent refusals as merely an invitation to try harder.
And while that relationship prompts the musical’s most substantial and best-known number, Meadowlark, to be exquisitely performed by Jones as her character considers the possibility of running away with a man closer to her age than her husband, it is merely the catalyst. Despite the musical being named after Geneviève, it is Rowe’s Aimable and the way in which his affable optimism is shredded by his wife’s betrayal that is at its core.
Rowe’s descent into depression is effective partly because the actor is so effective at making the happy version of Aimable so believable. Around him, though, the rest of the musical is slight. There are fun moments – an ensemble tribute to the glories of bread and pastries (a paean to pain, if you will) is a delight, revelling in the corniness of rhymes including “what could be so luscious / As a brioche is”. And the Act II moment of the village’s women celebrating themselves for themselves, and not letting themselves be defined by men, similarly raises a smile. (It also provides the crowning moment for the gently evolving mousiness of Hortense, played with subtle charm by Finty Williams.)
This all plays out in Paul Farnsworth’s beautiful, 360° set that truly immerses us into the village of Concord. However, despite the best efforts of director Gordon Greenberg, nothing can heal the structural flaws at the play’s heart. With Geneviève and Dominique gone for most of Act II, the taut focus of the first act dissipates.
And while this recreation of Provencal village life in the heart of Southwark makes for an enjoyable excursion, it is a shame thatThe Baker’s Wifecan’t escape the show’s biggest faults: as a musical, it is underbaked and doughy.
Continues until 14 September 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Underbaked
