Review: JO - THE LITTLE WOMEN MUSICAL IN CONCERT, Theatre Royal Drury Lane

Is there a story more universally connected to the experience of girlhood than Little Women? Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 coming-of-age novel is a beloved read across the world, with its descriptions of sisterly devotion, struggle, love, and loss. The March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy - have woven themselves into the lives of women and girls since their publication.

The March sisters are also no strangers to the theatre, and this is not the first time that someone tries to adapt it for the stage, and we’ve had quite a few less-than-deserving examples that shall go unmentioned. Dan Redfeld (music), Christina Harding and John Gabriel Koladziej (book and lyrics) take a different approach, trying to centre the narrative on Jo, the aspiring writer and passionate soul of the group, and titling their project Jo: The Little Women Musical.

But Jo’s role isn’t as prominent as we would expect from the name. Act one maintains a steady balance by introducing all the characters fairly, showing us a childhood filled with stories and playing pretend. By the interval, the writers shift the focus, and we finally follow the titular character more closely. Alcott’s tale comes to life in a collection of beautiful pieces of music; it’s a shame that, as a body of work, it’s excessively long and bulky. Running at three hours with an interval, it contains almost 40 tracks that extend way past what they have to say. Strangely, the prolixity we find in the songs isn’t echoed in the book, which is weak and bland in contrast to the linguistic refinement of the lyrics. 

Stylistically, it’s a very grand ol’ musical built on dependable formulas in a carefully traditional structure. It tips into epic, the score soaring at any turn to sustain gravitas. This ultimately becomes a problem: because everything is portrayed as being so inordinately climactic, the entity lacks dramatic tension as a whole. There are a few moments of comedy (caustic and dry with perfect timing, Tracie Bennett is a splendid Aunt March) where the action relaxes, but the emotivity of the plot never yields. This said, the grandeur of the compositions lends itself to exquisite vocal performances, here led by Christine Allado as Jo.

Allado is a star. She brings the house down with an emotional delivery, conveying all the stifled anxiety and ambition of the protagonist with elegance, sharing lovely chemistry and equally gorgeous harmonies with Eleanor Grant (Beth), Kelly Mathieson (Meg), and Sophie Pollono (Amy). Kerry Ellis and Julian Ovenden complete the March family, with Ellis giving an especially arresting rendition of “Between the Earth & Sky”, one of many lyrical ballads on the tracklist. “Can’t We Keep Pretending” and “Fly Away” (both Jo’s) are two more highlights, each providing a sentimental opportunity for a great vocalist to shine (which, obviously, Allado does).

It’s difficult to deduce if JoAnn M. Hunter’s direction reduced the non-sung sequences to the bare bones or streamlined any of the dialogues, but the issues we identified would nonetheless remain in a full production. If Hunter did indeed shorten the spoken scenes in favour of presenting the musical numbers as the context required, if fully staged, the show would run even longer. The creators cut the novel well, spotlighting only its more salient points, but the bottom line is that they were a little heavy-handed on these.

The score is outstanding and the orchestrations are sophisticated, but the songs are conceptually repetitive and overly meandering. We can forgive the utterly atrocious costumes on this occasion, but there are too many more fixable flaws in the material.