Chris Wiegand

The play within the play upends Charles Dickens’s perennial by making Tiny Tim a towering monster and leaving Scrooge even more bitter at the end of the tale. But the backstage story delivers goodwill when megalomaniacal director Chris – too cheap to turn the heating on – warms to his theatrical companions and vice versa.

But while the Curious Case musical dug deep into the mysteries of time, 50 First Dates is more confined by its concept and never packs enough emotional punch. That’s partly because the book by David Rossmer and Steve Rosen can be bland and their songs breezily enjoyable, without a heart-wrenching number that does justice to the pain at the story’s centre. Nevertheless, there are two genial leads with fine voices: Georgina Castle lights up the stage as always and Josh St Clair convincingly handles Henry’s switch from obnoxious playboy to caring partner.

The headline star is Brendan Gleeson but The Weir is an ensemble: its characters are on different frequencies yet see each other for who they are. That goes for the locals as well as a stranger like Valerie, relocating from Dublin as a “blow-in” while literal gales whistle outside in Gregory Clarke’s sound design. Her arrival prompts a troubling exchange of tall tales, dreams, memories and confessions but McPherson judiciously uses humour to clear the air between them. Much like a weir, the effect is simultaneously of free flow and stillness.

What power do you give another when you put your faith in them? What standards do you hold them to when you seek advice? When does care turn into control? As the questions proliferate and the pair argue over setting boundaries, Ireland continually blurs them in a play that regularly elicits winces. “Those that are crying will later be laughing,” paraphrases James from the Bible. The reverse is perhaps true for this troubling take on feeling lost and the thorny question of redemption.

As with all jukebox musicals, some lines simply distract while others hit home, such as Kim singing “you hold me without touch” from Gravity by Sara Bareilles. Music director and orchestrator Gregory Nabours’ macabre choral arrangement of Aerosmith’s Dream On manages to strike a similar tone to Danny Elfman’s film score. But the jumble of songs, played by a tight band, never quite finds a unified sound and the relationships between characters don’t all convince. It’s a fun and heartfelt show yet retains the air of a work-in-progress, as unfinished as a child with scissors for hands.

In Lynette Linton’s production neither the suspense nor the humour hit home, the mix often more awkward than unsettling. The biggest in a handful of plot revelations lacks emotional impact and does not so much shed light on earlier events as render them distractingly implausible. Given the considerable creative talent involved, this is a curiously flat affair, feeling longer than its interval-free 90 minutes, with little sense of these strangers being transformed by a shared experience.

These are copper-bottomed songs but there aren’t enough for a show that, at 100 minutes, is more than twice the length of the soundtrack. Some of them are done a disservice by becoming additional rinky-dink instrumentals. While creative director Simon Hammerstein has engineered a spirited experience, it lacks a knockout performance. You can’t help but notice that Keala Settle from the film is headlining a much cheaper musical elsewhere in town.

The villains’ machinations remain locked away in a comedy world, without gaining any modern resonance, and there is little sense of Hitchcock’s 30s London populated by bobbies and milkmen. In a show that needs more polished physical comedy, Eugene McCoy stands out for his vivid interpretations. Maddie Rice and Safeena Ladha juggle accents and, like Tom Byrne as Hannay, make a jolly stab at it but the result can sometimes feel less like a thrilling race against the clock and more of a garbled rush.

There is a surprising stream of humour throughout, bringing a certain verisimilitude of the fun and levity naturally found in family dynamics, but a crucial, palpable sense of familial bonds is absent. The jokes are commonplace, which is part of the point that this is an account of real life, but it adds to a growing sense that O’Dell’s work is more diary than drama. Tara’s occasionally sardonic take on what she and others could have said, and what they actually did say, jars more on stage than in the script. There is also too much thinly sketched plot and some needless peripheral roles.

Gary Wilmot is a hoot as Thomas Nostradamus, the ever-sensational Marisha Wallace (who appeared in Something Rotten! on Broadway) plays Nick’s quick-witted wife Bea and Steve Furst makes every line matter in his supporting role as Shylock (his character’s name is borrowed by Shakespeare, pinching freely as ever) whose speeches often give satirical bite to the comedy. There’s also Nick’s sensitive poet brother, Nigel (Cassius Hackforth), who falls for Portia (Evelyn Hoskins), daughter of Brother Jeremiah (Cameron Blakely), a puritan with carnal impulses given away by recurring double entendres.

Lucy Cuthbertson’s production, with additional direction by Frampton, is warm-spirited and well-paced. The young audience particularly enjoy when any potentially boring bits are fast-fowarded by the actors. Plays that close by extolling the wonders of drama can end up irritating instead. But Rough Magic concludes with a moving reflection on the spirit in which we make our entrances and exits at the theatre, and the wizardry that binds us in between.

Co-directed by Samuel Holmes and choreographer Nick Winston, with projections by Nina Dunn and sets and costumes by Philip Witcomb, the show often feels flatly unadventurous, typified by its lacklustre bridge-crossing sequence. Onions and ogres have layers, we’re told, in a line from the film. This musical? Not really.