Cameron Mackintosh Abandons Boublil & Schonberg's Revised MARTIN GUERRE

As reported back in 2015, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg were busy reworking their musical MARTIN GUERRE for a West End return, backed by Cameron Mackintosh.

And as of spring 2016, the writing team was hoping for a concert premiere at an opera house.

But in a recent feature interview with Graham Norton on BBC Radio 2, Mackintosh revealed he has given up on the project.

"I don't think we ever found what it was that made the story sing in the way the music required it to," Mackintosh said.

The producer did acknowledge that Boublil and Schonberg had "unfinished business" with the show and added: "I firmly believe there is something wonderful in there, but I am not the person that will ever get it out of them."

MARTIN GUERRE is a two-act musical with a book by Schönberg & Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Stephen Clark, and music by Schönberg. Written in the operatic style similar to the creative team's previous efforts, LES MISERABLES and MISS SAIGON, the bulk of the show is sung-through, with little spoken dialogue between the musical numbers.

MARTIN GUERRE premiered in London in 1996, was revived in 1999, and appeared in 2007 at the Watermill Theatre. It failed to match the box office success of its two predecessors.

Loosely based on the real-life historical figure Martin Guerre and the 1982 film The Return of Martin Guerre, the story is set in early modern France in the anti-Protestant town of Artigat, where young Martin Guerre is forced into an arranged marriage with Bertrande de Rols in order to produce a Catholic heiR. Martin is unsatisfied with the marriage, complicated by the fact that a childhood friend, Guillaume, is secretly in love with Bertrande.

Photo Credit: Jory Rivera