Long haul for a little romance
The Bridges Of Madison County (Menier Chocolate Factory, London) Verdict: A bridge too far ★★✩✩✩
FRANCESCA JOHNSON (Jenna Russell) is an Italian GI bride dutifully raising a family in rural Iowa in the mid-Sixties.
With her husband and children out of town for the State Fair, she is imagining a few days curled up with a book.
But then Robert Kincaid (Edward Baker-Duly), a photographer with National Geographic magazine, stops to ask directions and, before we know it, Francesca is shamelessly letting a handsome stranger replenish his cool-box in her kitchen.
If you found Robert James Waller’s novel soppy and had little time for the Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood movie, then you are on practically the same page as Jason Robert Brown, who wrote this musical adaptation’s songs.
In a Q&A in the programme, Brown admits he thought the novel was poorly written and gave the film 20 minutes on video. Clearly for Brown and collaborator Marsha Norman, the plan was development rather than reconstruction.
Well, the Menier’s tight space certainly suits the repurposed lovers’ eager clinches, but Trevor Nunn’s direction and Jon Bausor’s set seem to pine for the open acres of Broadway. Film backdrops flicker, tables and fridges rumble in on rails, and, in one of several moments of uncertain comedy, Kincaid putters onto the stage in a bizarrely sawn-off and entirely wheel-free truck.
Meanwhile, the music ranges from country to pop-rock and some is cornier than the box of Corn Flakes adrift on top of the Johnsons’ fridge.
Only Russell, exquisitely channelling the re-emergence of suppressed longings, is entirely comfortable, although Shanay Holmes as Kincaid’s ex achieves lift-off with a searing take on the Joni Mitchell-inspired Another Life. Alas, the story shifts and, in a bold bid for epic effect, spirals off to encompass a wedding, three deaths and a funeral.
At three hours long, the show began to feel as long as a feature in National Geographic. If only a crack photographer had been around to suggest some judicious re-focusing.