A movie’s musical makeover – but why bother, with songs this dull?
There was excited anticipation – and some controversy – ahead of this world premiere of the stage musical based on Bill Forsyth’s iconic 1983 film Local Hero, in which a Texas oilman arrives in the fictional coastal village of Ferness, in the north-west of Scotland, intent on turning it into an oil refinery. The feelgood gloss took a decided knock when Forsyth (who is credited as co-author, with David Greig, of the book for the show) announced that he would not be attending the opening night.
The veteran filmmaker had, he said, been sidelined from the creative process and reduced to the role of a mere “editor”. We will probably never know whether his co-producers, the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh and London’s Old Vic, were guilty of gross disrespect, or Forsyth was at fault for having too thin a skin for such a collaborative process.
In any case, the proof of the proverbial pudding is that, had he been in attendance at Saturday night’s opening, the filmmaker would have had entirely different reasons to express disappointment. Although director John Crowley succeeds in evoking much of the warm humour of the original film, Knopfler’s songs are depressingly unmemorable.
What is strange is that the former Dire Straits frontman had two very distinct starting points for his score; namely, his much-loved theme tune for the 1983 film, and Scottish traditional music. Both feature, but neither stamps its authority on a set of songs that is characterised, both musically and lyrically, by an insipid sentimentality.
It’s a pity, as the production is blessed with some fine performances, not least from Matthew Pidgeon as hotel proprietor-cum-financial adviser Gordon. The early number in which (having just learnt of the proposed oil deal) he celebrates his coming wealth is more memorable for Pidgeon’s hilariously exuberant performance than for anything happening on the musical front.
Damian Humbley is nicely cast in the role of Macintyre, the lonely Houston oil executive, which he plays with the perfect combination of go-getting arrogance, human frailty and self-effacing humour.
The book (from which Forsyth has distanced himself) winks at many of the film’s best-loved jokes, from a well-aged whisky being “old enough to be out on its own” to the unknown parentage of the village baby. But the script takes some wrong turns, such as the irritatingly incongruous scene (complete with terrible song) in which the women of the village try to persuade the eccentric beach-dweller Ben to sell up and move into a retirement home.
Scott Pask’s understated set relies heavily upon Luke Halls’s impressive projections for its sense of spectacle, which it achieves most notably in the moments when it evokes the night skies over the Highlands. Ultimately, however, weighed down by Knopfler’s lacklustre score, the production seems perpetually stuck in second gear.