JEFF WAYNE’S THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

Jeff wayne’s The war Of The worlds is living proof that nothing stays out of fashion forever. despite selling millions of copies around the world in the years following its original release in 1978, the album was clogging up bargain bins up and down the nation by the late 80s, alongside similarly unsellable discs. Yet, like elO before it, The war Of The worlds has escaped history’s cruel waste disposal unit and become a hot commercial property once more.

Some of it’s good. The iconic, sixnote motif that heralds the arrival of the Martians still has the power to thrill and give goosebumps. liam neeson (who’s not physically present, but projected onto big screens either side of the stage) has enough natural gravitas to step into richard Burton’s shoes as the voice of The Journalist, even if some of his looks to camera are rather hammy. The enormous Martian robot that drops from the rafters to tower above the audience is genuinely spectacular. and adam Garcia is a powerful presence as the artillery man, especially when nailing the high notes on Brave new world.

But elsewhere the pickings are slim. Jason donovan lacks phil lynott’s crazed, fiery charisma as parson nathaniel, and newton Faulkner in the lead role looks bored throughout, even during an unintentionally comical moment at the beginning of Forever autumn when a mic fault means he sounds like Stephen Hawking singing underwater.

The literature promoting the show promises that it will “break through the fourth wall”, but there’s no real evidence of this, unless it’s referring to the series of favourable audience tweets that are projected onto the backdrop during the interval, alongside factoids reminding those present of the original album’s exulted status in pop history. There is a bridge that rises up and extends into the crowd, but it doesn’t serve the plot in any way, as if the producers had discovered the prop lying backstage and decided to corral it into service.

Some members of the audience are clearly in deep. when the little steamer dodges the Martian death ray to reach the safety of the open sea, the moment is celebrated with small pockets of applause around the arena, in the manner of exchange students marking a successful easyJet landing at luton airport. But otherwise it’s a curiously uninvolving experience, somewhere in between a rock concert stymied by the need to adhere closely to a score – Jeff wayne himself is conducting the orchestra – and a musical dwarfed by the cavernous venue. and for such a spectacular story, the end result is surprisingly subdued.