Review: TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN, Comedy Theatre, Saturday 25th July 2009

Of all the superlatives I could use to describe a new musical, the one I must attribute to Too Close To The Sun is "the worst show I have ever seen on a West End stage".

Writer/producer John Robinson hasn't learnt his lesson from the mauling his last outing, Behind The Iron Mask, got from critics and audiences, and has lumbered the Comedy Theatre with this appalling mess of a show.

A reimagining of Ernest Hemingway's last days may not be obvious material, but in the right hands it could work. Without characterisation, strong lyrics or melodies, it can't, and it doesn't. Ernest (James Graeme) seems quite a nice chap - the old glutton kept under control by his pretty younger wife, Mary, who veers between being a loving spouse and a hateful manipulative jealous shrew. Rex de Havilland (Christopher Howell) is apparently based on Max Dettweiler in The Sound Of Music, the showbiz chancer with no moral scruples, but with an added penchant for comedy musical numbers. And as for Louella Baxter (Tammy Joelle), the saucy secretary, is she supposed to be an ingenue, a conniving conwoman, or a defeated woman who doesn't know how to live once her youthful beauty begins to fade? Who can tell? The script certainly provides no illumination. The libretto includes constant foreshadowing of Hemingway's death and the manner by which it will occur, till even the least historically aware onlooker knows what's going to happen; and more peculiarly it's packed full of references to food. Perhaps there was a metaphor there I missed.

When Helen Dallimore as Mary Hemingway begins a song with the immortal line, "I don't trust that pirate girl", a good proportion of the audience burst out laughing.  And "burst" is the right word - it's not a ripple of amusement, this is full-on, no-holds-barred hilarity.  Yet it's downhill from there, and it doesn't even have the saving grace of comedic value after that - it's just deeply, deeply shoddy and dull. There wasn't even any applause after any of the songs in the second act, and I'm still not sure whether that was down to a conscious audience decision, or to them being dumbfounded, or to the fact that they just couldn't tell when a song had ended.

With such material, even the best cast in the world couldn't save it from being the year's biggest turkey. They clearly know the show, far from being Too Close To The Sun, should Close before the end of its scheduled Run.

Rating - a single star - *

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