Slump fever

Gone With the Wind 
New London Theatre

How did they get it so wrong? Turning chicklit’s greatest story into a hit musical should have been a doddle. Just put the characters on stage and let the warm romantic breeze of the narrative carry you safely home. And that’s exactly what Trevor Nunn has done and yet the critics have misinterpreted Gone with the Wind and denounced it as a flop. I’m baffled. At last week’s Saturday matinée I joined a sell-out crowd and saw a handsome gutsy version of a completely captivating novel. Never mind the timeless magic of the storyline, look at the performances. Jill Paice is a brittle, beautiful cracker of a Scarlett and Darius Danesh’s Rhett has all that’s required, devilish eyes, a sonorous voice, a lot of slicked black hair and something extra too, the god-like swagger of a young Sean Connery. And Natasha Yvette Williams, playing Mammy, has a voice with a kick as powerful as Aretha’s. But not everything’s perfect. The opening song is a sluggish ensemble number so the show hits the ground dawdling. And there are too many melodies crammed into the 215-minute running time. Some should go, but which ones? Songs between the stars? No. The audience wants the stars. Songs by lesser characters? No. That’ll upset the dressing-room. Best solution is to keep it as it is and make that a selling point. Yes, it’s sprawling, it’s kitsch and it’s cumbersome but that’s the idea.

So the question remains. How did the critics get it so wrong? Well, there’s slump fever for a start. The newspapers keep peddling the myth that we’ll soon be living in caves, eating grass and bartering. Then up pops this lavish theatrical gamble and it gets fed into the same blender as everything else.