Time Out

The satire here is, charitably, broad. Strip away the social hypocrisy, Pinero says, and the moneylenders and blackmailers are basically politicians without a parliament. A modern-day coda in this version doesn’t add anything cleverer. But you don’t turn to farce for nuanced or incisive commentary . What stops this production from being truly great, as funny as some of its lines and scenes are, is the lack of that singular and relentless escalation you find in the best of the genre. In spite of Carroll’s changes, there’s too much going on, too many trifling side-plots, in every way. It doesn’t build to that perfect pinnacle of comedic disaster.

Director Alice Hamilton captures something of this scientific excitement in her production. On Sarah Beaton’s set, an observatory-like curved strip of video screen covers the entire back of the top of the stage, upon which video designer Zakk Hein’s animated scrawls of equations, fields of stars and solar eclipses play out like watching mid-twentieth-century news reels in a darkened cinema. There’s a sense of grandeur in these between-scene moments – of the ‘why’ and not just the struggle – that this meticulously researched play could dip into more deeply.

Fein, who co-directed ‘sexy Oklahoma!’ when it came to London last year and helped strip it of any hokey old associations, eradicates the kitsch here, too. Yes it’s funny – Adam Dannheisser’s Tevye still cracks jokes and talks to the audience, though he’s more dad-funny than the kind of showman-comedian that Tevye often becomes – and yes it’s faithful, but this is a serious production.

I'd say Staunton’s stronger and more age appropriate casting for Dolly than Barbra Streisand was in the 1969 movie. Petite, rosy-cheeked and indomitable, Staunton doesn't have Streisand's clarion pipes or goddessy physicality, or indeed the gorgeous jammy-voiced assistance of Louis Armstrong. But she crushes it as Dolly, making her a puckish nemesis who wreaks havoc in the boring life of Horace Vandergelder, stingy ‘half millionaire’, and oppressor of nieces and clerks. Staunton is a consummate actress who can also sing, not the other way around. The farcical, goofy storyline bustles and hustles constantly, but Staunton cuts through the noise, not with front and brass but with touching subtlety and emotional depth.

You also know you’re in trouble with a musical when the songs are straining so hard to be inspirational that a plot-device bike ride gets as rousing an anthem as a character’s death. The second half is better because it creates space for Zheng Xi’s gorgeous piano playing. There’s an emotion, nuance and depth, sorely lacking elsewhere, before we’re thrust into another pastel-coloured, frenetically choreographed power ballad.