Review: THE LITTLE PRINCE, London Coliseum

Turning one of the world’s most famous children’s works into a lively stage adventure populated with quirky characters and illustrated by marvellous sights sounds like a money-making machine. So how does this production get it so wrong?

Based on Antoine De Saint Exupery’s 1943 novella, The Little Prince is an iconic text in France and beyond. Translated into 600 languages (more than any other non-religious text), it has has many adaptations through opera, ballet, classical music, anime, film and TV. This live version comes courtesy of Broadway Entertainment Group and lands at the West End’s biggest venue with a hefty ad campaign behind it and in the middle of a world tour.

We first meet the aviator as he lands on the Prince’s planet and hears about his journeys through the cosmos coming across a bizarre collection of animals and humans. One of the story’s most prized aspects is its intimacy and its core tenet of empathy for all around us. Reading this small book with its outsized characters, it’s almost impossible not to feel swept along on the fantastical odyssey and feel more connected with the world around us.

Choreographer and director Anne Tournie paints vivid tableaux through her talented cast and full-on video projections. Adaptor and associate director Chris Mouron appears on stage as the Narrator, her sparse intonations introducing the set pieces. Between them they have created something which - quite amazingly given the huge budget thrown at this - manages to disappoint both die-hard fans and those new to the story.

The promotional material promises acres of dazzling circus but the emphasis here is on extended ground-based dance sequences with the acrobats occasionally popping up to dazzle from duo straps, within a cyr wheel or dangling from a swinging pole. All the while, the blonde-wigged Prince and the Pilot go from encounter to encounter.

The first is promising: dressed in a red gown with detachable white sleeves, the entrancing Marie Menuge convincingly embodies the Rose with her graceful motion and tender chemistry to the sound of soft, calming music. From there, we have a series of one-dimensional portrayals: Lee Kok Liamg’s Vain Man poses for countless selfies as he spins around and around, the King (Patricio Di Stabile) arrives on a four-person human “throne” and Edouard Goux as The Drunkard increasingly staggers about to comical effect.

Among the twenty segments that make up the 105-minute running time, there are a few standouts but they are the exception rather than the rule. The Lamplighter sequence is visually striking as Marcin Janiak swings over the stage on a pendulum-like lamppost while dancers holding LED lamps move across a chessboard-patterned floor. Set against a screen of numbers and formulas projected behind him, The Businessman (Filippo Di Crosta) has his rigid, calculated movements effectively underscored and enhanced by mechanical, string-heavy music. 

There’s plenty of eye candy but little to feed the heart. Mouron keeps to the core events but rarely gives us the emotional catharsis of the original text. Her role feels misplaced and often unnecessary as she appears and disappears, walking around or standing in the corner, stepping up to deliver dialogue but adding little emotion or depth to the story. At the end, she sings the song of The Little Prince but with little passion and to little effect.

The marked lack of overall charm will inevitably put off the book's many fans and, with her Narrator providing minimal context to what is happening around her, Mouron’s adaptation will confuse those who haven’t read the book. For her own part, Tournie applies a stylish gloss - helped massively by Terry Truck’s scintillating music and Marie Jumelin often jaw-dropping video projections - to a show that has little in the way of emotional substance. 

There are plenty of laudable recent examples of circus being married to well known tales, not least last year’s brilliant Acrobatic Swan Lake at Sadler’s Wells and Come Alive! (based on The Greatest Showman) but this isn’t one. With the blend of high concept and big top artistry, their Francophone cousins Cirque du Soleil are an obvious (if erroneous) comparison. While the latter company effortlessly fills the Royal Albert Hall on an annual basis, BEG's take on The Little Prince is simply not big enough for a venue of this size. It may have the edge over the Canadians in terms of its tech wizardry but, somewhere along the way, there’s a feeling that this underpowered production reached for the stars but, in so doing, lost its soul.

The Little Prince continues at the London Coliseum until 16 March.

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