Cooking! Live on stage! In time to the music! Proving once and for all that a pasta meal really is simple enough to prepare after a hard day at work - it must have been fresh pasta though because it wasn't in the saucepan for very long.
Apart from the onstage culinary wizardry, 'Love Story' at the Duchess has much going for it. The two leads were very good, I felt that Emma Williams had the edge as Jenny. She had a steel to her performance that made you believe in the stoic acceptance of her illness. Michael Xavier as Oliver had the harder task to perform, the rift from his family not eliciting much natural sympathy.
The story of 'Love Story' is not going to win many awards for straying from the hard worn romantic tragedy path, it may have been more ground breaking in 1970 but I don't think it's very likely. As the opening number says 'What Can You Say?', a fair assessment of the entire musical. It does exactly what you expect.
Music and lyrics by Stephen Clark and Howard Goodall are straight forward and tidily performed by the onstage band - as straight forward as such an honest theatrical endeavour deserves. The flashback structure doesn't add anything to the story but does allow for the satisfaction of the score ending with echoing the same melody with which it began. The famous 'Love Story' theme makes a welcome appearance in one scene which, I would imagine, everyone in the audience would have expected.
Overall though I couldn't help feeling that the evening needed something more to raise it above the level of alright. I didn't get the kind of emotional burst at the finale which I would have expected - I'm quite easy to move with a little theatrical magic. My friend was in floods though so maybe it was just me.
Bill Count: 3
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