Review: MARTIN GUERRE, The Old Vic

It’s Les Mis if you squint. A musical based on turbulent French history, doomed love, and flags brandished like an executioner's axe. Except this is not the longest running musical in West End history. This is its weird cousin Martin Guerre.

Can lyricist Alain Boublil and composer Claude-Michel Schonberg’s follow up to their smash-hit escape its troubled past? Derided as a flop in 1996, Guerre has since undergone seen a slew of revisions to bring it to a new streamlined production at The Old Vic. 

The story is much the same, only squeezed to fit a tighter run time. Martin Guerre is a French peasant goaded into marrying Bertrande. Unable to consummate the marriage he flees the town’s suffocating claustrophobia and its drought, that he is blamed for, to fight in an unnamed war leaving his wife and home behind. Seven years pass and Martin returns a rugged war hero. He lives happily with Bertrande, apparently lifting the drought until his rival Guillaume accuses him of being an imposter and their happiness unravels.

Trimmed to an audience friendly ninety minutes, Warchus crams in story beats to reach the dramatic core: the courtroom drama in which Guerre stands trial for his life, fracturing a town already split down the middle. There is a thrill to it as fingers point and tempers boil, but without breathing room for its characters, emotions are crammed down our throats. Though only Bertrande achieves three dimensionality, an impassionate Liv Andrusier's performance is the production's anchor, but others are not so lucky. Guillaume is particularly guilty of cardboard rage, all clenched fists and scowling power ballads.

Warchus and the creative team have missed a trick. The town’s paranoid skullduggery evokes echoes of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People or Brittain’s Peter Grimes, fitting for a world that has slipped back into witch hunts, albeit of a social media variety, and political tribalism. Instead, Martin Guerre sways towards clunkily executed theology. Guerre’s return brings rain after seven years of drought and his child is hailed as a messiah; the false prophet chicanery was supposedly the original version’s downfall.

So, this updated version’s heart remains elusive, but its undeniable charm keeps our blood pumping. The rambunctious music is impossible to ignore, and the tightly choreographed chorus sways and throbs like a shoal of tuna. Rob Howell's in-the-round wooden set heats it with folktale warmth. It’s not quite a big finale for Warchus’s ending tenure at the helm of The Old Vic, but I doubt it was meant to be that with only a short “semi-staged” run. Maybe it’s just a passion project before the curtains fall.

Read our interview with Alex James-Hatton, who plays Martin Guerre here.

Martin Guerre plays at The Old Vic until 31 October

Reader Reviews

To post a comment, you must register and login.

Sign-Up for News

Get the latest news, discounts & more for Martin Guerre and more!