There's not much to stir the emotions in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Like mother like daughter: Joanna Riding as Madame Emery with Carly Bawden as Geneviève
10 April 2012

Jacques Demy's 1964 film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg made a star of Catherine Deneuve.

Its success had a lot to do with Michel Legrand's romantic music, which created an exuberant opera out of the everyday, and for the Cornish company Kneehigh's version of this classic weepie, Legrand has re-orchestrated his score.

The story is a simple one of doomed love. Garage mechanic Guy falls for Geneviève, who works in her mother's smart but struggling umbrella shop.

Their relationship blossoms but then Guy is sent to fight in Algeria and Geneviève must choose between staying true to him or accepting the advances of a rich local merchant, to whom her mother has had to sell her jewellery.

These events are framed by cabaret artist Meow Meow, who as vixenish hostess Lola begins by clambering through the stalls and later gets the best song ("Sans toi", originally written by Legrand for another film). The device is curious and not wholly effective. Her repeated joke that she's a "maîtresse" rather than a "mattress" is indicative of the production's thin humour, manifest in a skimpy pastiche of French culture that leaves one wondering who forgot the baguettes. Even more bizarre is the decision to cast a man (Dominic Marsh) as Guy's ailing aunt.

The main plot is sung-through; there aren't choruses but instead, as in the film, a wealth of sung dialogue. It's a fine achievement by Legrand, but not truly engaging. The lyrics, in an old and for present purposes none too apt translation by Sheldon Harnick, feel banal. Carly Bawden brings a sweet purity to Geneviève. But Joanna Riding seems underused as her mother, and Andrew Durand's Guy is somewhat stiff.

Lez Brotherston's designs are inventive, and there are imaginative touches from director Emma Rice. Yet even these are overstretched. The passing of time is shown by minor characters holding up handkerchiefs or dishcloths with captions stitched on to them. Initially this is enchanting, but the conceit becomes predictable.

And, more problematically, some of the action is hard to see, as if designed for a very different kind of space.

It's all rather insipid and bitty - the film's colour is lost, and little is added. At the outset Lola tells off the audience for being typically English and keeping our feelings under out bowler hats. But there's not much here to stir the emotions.

Until October 1 (0870 950 0915).

The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg
Gielgud Theatre
Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 6AR

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