Menier Chocolate Factory, London; Chichester Festival theatre; Kiln, London
The Bridges of Madison County musical hits all the right notes in Trevor Nunn’s heartfelt production. Plus, an irresistible Oklahoma! – and how blue do you want your blues?
Based on Robert James Waller’s bestselling novel The Bridges of Madison County, Jason Robert Brown’s musical, which had a short run on Broadway in 2014, needed either to rise above sentimentality or to embrace it unashamedly. Trevor Nunn’s brilliant and involving production does both. I had to pinch myself to check that I was, against expectation, enjoying myself inordinately, and to accept that even the songs with the lamest lyrics were turning out to be no obstacle to a great night out (handkerchiefs are required).
This is the story of a middle-aged Italian immigrant, Francesca, who lives in Iowa and is married to a former American soldier, now a farmer. Francesca is outstandingly played by Jenna Russell, who makes you sympathise with each lilting Italian syllable that she says and sings (the show is uneven musically, but there’s a touch of Joni Mitchell to its best numbers). When Francesca’s husband and children go off to a county fair without her, she looks forward to lie-ins and iced tea and studying seed catalogues. She is not, you would think, the sort of woman to stray.
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