So twee, it's a trial - The Wind in the Willows, London Palladium, review
Stubbornness is the hallmark of the impatient, novelty-chasing Mr Toad. And hasty obstinacy is the stand-out characteristic of this lavish musical adaptation of the evergreen Kenneth Grahame classic, brought to us by Julian Fellowes and Mssrs Stiles and Drewe (a trio currently delighting the West End, but alas not for much longer, with the estimable but plainly under-valued Half a Sixpence).
I issued a polite three-star hint when the production opened in Plymouth last autumn that it left a lot to be desired – but that hint has fallen on deaf ears. Although finessing has apparently gone on since then, the fundamental issue hasn’t been addressed: this show is burdened by an insufferable twee-ness.
There’s only so much Edwardian innocence, as expressed through the power of song, that man, woman or child can take, and I felt I’d had my fill of it by the end of the first of 20 numbers. Fellowes’s book, slight to say the least, need only really have characters saying “I feel another song coming on”. On and on they come.
Which isn’t to say that the composing duo don’t attempt variety. As they point out in the programme, this is a “musical journey”, drawing on 150 years’ worth of influences – carols, Gilbert and Sullivan, Vaughan Williams, Flanders and Swann, even a wake-up splattering of rock and rap.
Yet do people really want “musical journeys”? Surely they want ripping yarns, and the preoccupation with elaborating new tunes comes at the dramatic expense of showing us a good time. What might look and sound OK in a workshop, drama-school audition, amateur stage or even regional playhouse looks preposterously over-exposed at the Palladium.
The comic ebullience and brio of a boggle-eyed, green-moustachioed Rufus Hound as Toad saves it from being a full-on car-crash; whenever he’s about, the mood brightens, and he gets a terrific send-off over the stalls in a jet-pack (there are no complaints, really, about Peter McKintosh’s picturesque set-design, while Rachel Kavanaugh’s direction does her proud too).
Full marks as well to Simon Lipkin for his drolly down-to-earth Rat and to Craig Mather for his Harry Potter-ish Mole (Gary Wilmot is, perhaps mercifully for him, almost unrecognisable as gruffly disapproving Badger). Yet neither the capable principals nor the pretty costumes nor the spirited choreography can hide the fact that this is a trial, a sentence, an incarceration from which one wishes one could escape dressed as a washer-woman. “Poop-poop!” Toad cries. Too right.
Booking until Sept 9. Tickets: 0844 874 0665; willowsmusical.com
