The latest staging of the musical Martin Guerre at the Old Vic is a pared-down, 95-minute, in-the-round production developed and directed by Matthew Warchus. The show, which runs to 31 October, tells the historic story of a 16th-century French peasant who returns to his wife after years away but is then suspected of being an imposter.
Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and co-author and lyricist Alain Boublil have spent three decades trying to reshape their 1996 musical into something that will stand comparison with their operatic hits Les Misérables and Miss Saigon. The Schönberg/Boublil version won an Olivier Award in 1997 despite being constantly rehashed during its original run, and it has been revised and rewritten several times since.
Pacy Folk-Horror with Fine Singing
The current iteration plays out like a pacy, screamy folk-horror, but one that takes itself far too seriously. Everyone wears black, and French rusticity is implied by northern English accents. Characters are forever heaving their hearts into their throats and yowling about God, witchcraft, love or jealousy.
There is some fine singing from the mostly young cast, particularly Liv Andrusier as Martin's abandoned and then apparently zestfully re-embraced wife Bertrande. But “overwrought” does not begin to describe it.
Score and Plot
The largely through-sung score is driven by plangent strings, with a recurring upstart penny whistle and what sounds like a wistful harmonium. Some of the set numbers are very fine, particularly “Someday” and “Live With Somebody You Love.” But too many feel like sketchy placeholders, there to move the story on. New songs have been written, some old ones possibly renamed, and three English-speaking lyricists are credited.
The plot weaves together big themes. The teenage marriage of Martin and Bertrande is supposed to cement the prosperity of their farming families, but their childlessness coincides with a punishing drought. Witchcraft is presumed. Martin runs off to war to become a man, while Bertrande endures her accusing neighbours and her rejected suitor Guillaume (Barney Wilkinson).
Direction and Design
Warchus's direction and Rob Howell's basic design of a circle of benches strewn with red chaff are succinct and effective. The lighting and the band are crisp. However, everything is a bit too obvious or on-the-nose, from the Traitors cloaks and chalk-smeared faces of the beginning to the flag-waving war flashbacks and the deployment of village idiot Benoit (Colin Ryan) and his doll-bride Louison for light relief.
Critics have been asked not to reveal the ending, which is okay, as there is not one at the moment, just a series of false climaxes then a slow withdrawal from the stage. Perhaps the story is itself the problem: the very mystery that makes the real-life tale of Martin Guerre so tantalising does not lend itself to an easily resolved narrative.
