It’s Beauty and the Beast for grown-ups
The Grinning Man (Bristol Old Vic) Verdict: A dark delight ★★★★✩
A Pacifist’s Guide To The War On Cancer (National Theatre, Dorfman) Verdict: My diagnosis — it’s surreal ★★✩✩✩
THE story is always the key to a good musical. That’s why so many of the bestknown shows plunder great books: Oliver, Les Miserables, Phantom Of The Opera.
It’s also why two ambitious new productions this week enjoy contrasting fortunes. One is the The Grinning Man at Bristol’s Old Vic. The other is A Pacifist’s Guide To The War On Cancer at the National Theatre.
The Grinning Man is a weird and wonderful show based on Victor Hugo’s gothic novel, The Man Who Laughs, produced and directed by Tom Morris — the creator of War Horse. The story is a murky melodrama set in a Georgian fairground where a disfigured man is part of a freak show.
Strongly reminiscent of Phantom Of The Opera and The Elephant Man, it’s a Beauty And The Beast type fairy tale with the ‘freak’ being redeemed by the love of a beautiful blind girl. What transforms the potentially morose story is Tim Phillips and Marc Teitler’s hypnotic music.
Certainly the duets between our tortured hero Grinpayne (Louis Maskell) and his beloved Dea (Audrey Brisson) are a memorable fusion of the nasal anguish of his voice and the blackcurrant sweetness of hers.
And yet the story is also a Blackadderish hoot, thanks not only to Carl Grose’s adaptation, but also to the ever-extraordinary Julian Bleach as a hilariously evil clown.
Best remembered as the Nosferatu-like MC in Shockheaded Peter in the Nineties, Bleach plays another wheyfaced revenant here. He wobbles about as though managing severe inebriation, eyebrows on delayed reaction and sepulchral delivery matching his character’s gallows humour. With Sean Kingsley as the lovers’ adoptive father singing like Tom Waits; and Gloria Onitiri putting me in mind of Minnie Ripperton as a sex-crazed Princess, it’s perfectly cast.
Jon Bausor’s stage design is a dingily atmospheric maw with white gnashers framing a dark and sinister vault. There’s nice puppetry, too, from Handspring Puppets (War Horse again), including a memorably mangy but loyal wolf. My one quibble is that, at three hours, it’s too long — and most scenes could be trimmed. But the cast are creating such a buzz you can see why they’ve left it as it is: a dark delight.
IF ONLY A Pacifist’s Guide To The War On Cancer had such a strong story. Written by Bryony Kimmings, it’s based on her terrifying experiences after her baby was diagnosed with cancer — and the experiences of people she’s met on NHS oncology wards.
Kimmings wonders at the start if cancer is a suitable subject for a musical, but there’s no reason why not; as long as there’s a strong story.
Each character either tells us about their suffering; or has snippets acted out, as they — and actors dressed up as multicoloured tumours (left) — tramp about the stage.
Tom Parkinson’s music is mostly rock with a dash of disco, funk and techno — and one punk song (‘F*** This’) about impotent rage in the middle of the night.
But for all the understandable anger, there is little sadness until the end when the audience call out the names of people they’ve known with cancer.
Lucy Osborne lays on an amusingly surreal design with gigantic, bouncy-castle-like tumours pushing out of the walls, eventually crowding out the stage, which is framed by seven sets of swing doors inevitably marked EXIT. But without a stronger story, this is more therapeutic encounter group than fully fledged musical.