BWW Reviews: SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, July 28 2015

It's a joyous little show in the Park this summer, with this revival of the rather old-hat Seven Brides for Seven Brothers - never quite in the calibre of the Golden Age of Hollywood Musicals, but a traditional favourite and staple of am-dram nonetheless.

The songs are immediately hummable and beautifully performed by the orchestra hidden in the backwoods; the dancing (courtesy of choreographer Alistair David) is divine, and wonderfully performed by the company, in particular those titular brothers; Alex Gaumond and Laura Pitt-Pulford are delightful as a charming Adam and a sassy Milly, our warring lovers - Gaumond's boots are as shiny as Pitt-Pulford's hair.

It's upbeat, briskly paced, and imaginative. So let's talk about the plot.

All of the other reviews I've seen of the show have mentioned that the storyline is rather "problematic" when looked upon with modern eyes (spoilers - Adam marries Milly without telling her there are six more hairy bachelors at home for her to look after; then the menfolk decide to take a trip into the nearest town and kidnap the women they lust after). They seem to have overlooked that the show itself finds the brothers' actions beyond the pale - that's why Milly is enraged, and why the girls' families are so angry.

Indeed, most of the sexual politics that could be handled in a hideously traditional way are actually dealt with sensitively by director Rachel Kavanaugh, who deserves enormous plaudits. It's clear that Milly is so head-over-heels smitten with Adam that she'd have married him whatever, even if he had sixty bachelor brothers at home; and, I suppose, at least all the men recognise the various errors of their ways, from abduction to familial abandonment.

The real difficulty for me - aside from the use of blankets over the head (which interestingly drew little laughter) to kidnap a bunch of women who in this interpretation of the show would have probably eloped willingly if they'd only been asked - was in the behaviour of our hero. After Milly's shock that she's going to have to cook and clean for seven men rather than the one she was expecting, Adam knows that it would be a gross invasion to try to assert what were once termed "conjugal rights." So he sets up a little crib for himself in the loft until Milly (who, as we've already seen, is desperately attracted to him) invites him into her bed - we know from this that Adam realises what is acceptable behaviour and what is not.

Thus it is disturbing to see him, in his sulky rage after his wife begins to civilise his brothers for female company, advise his siblings that, just like in the Rape of the Sabine Women (who apparently liked it really despite all their crying), they should go and abduct their womenfolk - and leads the escapade himself. He only comes to realise the behaviour was unacceptable - despite the girls' distress and their telling him so - when he has a daughter himself and suddenly develops some empathy - not an unusual occurrence, even today, but still moderately depressing to see a man unable to treat women as human until he has some genetics in the next generation.

It's a credit to Gaumond that he can still make Adam likeable, a credit to Pitt-Pulford that she imbues Milly with enough spark that the audience realise she's in control of her choices rather than cowed by her husband, and a credit to the production that it can largely stand up to this kind of modern critique - and it would be interesting to hear from the creatives about the tweaks they made to the book as well as the directional choices they made in order to make this piece acceptable for 21st-century eyes.

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