Nick Curtis — Theater Critic

There’s undeniable emotional force in seeing such experienced interpreters of Sondheim pay tribute, but it’s refreshing too when newcomers like the charismatic Bradley Jaden and the captivating Beatrice Penny-Touré take the focus.

Bertie Carvel’s transformative turn as her mentor and tormentor Henry Higgins will, I suspect, be a bit more Marmite for audiences. He’s an effete, manic demon with a Mr Punch leer and a strangulated (but perfectly enunciated) voice, hips jutting and shoulders slumped like a half-strung marionette. A play that’s ostensibly about speech involves an awful lot of body language.

The creators’ experience in crafting three-minute hits and their relative ignorance of musical theatre convention prove liberating. Several numbers, particularly those involving the bros, sound like superior boyband ballads: I mean that as a compliment. There are party tunes as Henry goes out drinking both pre- and post-accident. OK, it’s a little obvious to give Parris, the only black woman in a lead role, a gospel-inflected tune: but the lyrics communicate both the stress and the passion of a doctor’s life.

Believe the hype. Daniel Fish’s radical staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Western musical from 1943 is utterly thrilling. Though the music is as gorgeous as ever, this version strips away many of the folksy, hokey accretions the show has acquired over the years and finds something much darker and more powerful.

And oh dear, the characterisations. Emmeline advocated violent protest to win wealthy, older, married women the vote: Sylvia wanted universal suffrage for men and women, by peaceful means. Here, their ideological differences have the air of a domestic spat. Knight and Rose (and Ellena Vincent as Christabel) transcend the stilted relationships through sheer charisma and vocal power.

Director Sam Mendes’s enthralling production blends domestic and world events, a ritualistic family saga, and homages to American culture. There’s a curved Cinerama-style screen at the back of the stage showing the Atlantic, empty Alabama vistas and the changing New York skyline, plus a live, silent-movie style piano accompaniment throughout. The witty performances have more than a touch of vaudeville: I was occasionally reminded of the Marx Brothers.

The script is expertly crafted and sometimes incisive. Steiner doesn’t beat any particular drum, but the central concept strikes chords in contemporary politics, both in recent attempts to limit the right to protest or to strike here, and in more authoritarian regimes overseas.

If you surrender to the absurdity, it's ...

Overall, this is a handsomely mounted, well-acted work that strums reliably on the emotions, but feels inescapably like a museum piece. Scratchy film at the end tells us about the real Jewish-American-German couple that inspired Watch on the Rhine, and Hellman’s own later steadfastness during the McCarthy witchhunts in the 1950s. A new play about either might feel more stimulating.