BWW Reviews: THE BAKER'S WIFE, Union Theatre, September 22 2011

The classic shape of an English loaf is square and solid, like the houses in which they would be cut and toasted before being smeared with sufficient marmalade to obviate any pleasure being taken in the taste of our daily bread. In France, naturellement, things are different, with loaves taken warm each morning from the local baker's oven and dabbed with just enough butter to unfurl the bread's majestic taste all over the palate. And as for the shape? Well...

The Baker's Wife (at the Union Theatre until October 15) invites us into a remote and insular French village of the 1930s in which everyone knows everyone else rather too well, feuds have bubbled along for generations and, quel dommage, the baker has died without the foresight to appoint a successor! After weeks in which the need for fresh bread has risen to a lust for fresh bread, a new baker arrives to provide the villagers with baguettes, croissants and tartes... and a new object for their lust - his young and flighty wife. Food, sex and the French all jumbled together eh? Who would have thought it?

With pleasant, if not quite catchy, songs beautifully played on piano (Chris Mundy) and cello (Colin Clark) and with standout performances from Michael Matus as Aimable the Baker and Ricky Butt as Denise, the funny and clever proprietress of the village cafe, this revival of the Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein show brings a neglected musical back to London after an absence of 21 years. It's sentimental, romantic and very French and, were it made for the screen (its inspiration was a film of 1938), it would be described as a perfect date movie.

With a cast of eighteen and two musicians to be accommodated on a small stage, director Michael Strassen balances the big setpieces and the individual confessions of love gained and lost, allowing the audience to get close the characters emotionally as well as physically. That willingness to flesh out the supporting roles is crucial to the show's success, because the film on which the musical is based had no Hollywood ending (it was made in France, not California), and leaves one contemplating exactly what "happy ever after" really means in lives that are the products of the compromises people make as they get by with what they have (but if you try some time / you just might find / you'll get what you need - as a song in a rather different musical genre had it). Such ambivalence may have played a part in the original production's early close in the West End of 1990 and in its continuing absence from Broadway, but it gives a layer of subtlety to a production that leaves one with rather more to chew over than the average romcom.          

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.