Thom Southerland has made himself a master of the unexpected musical. His speciality is contrarian stagings. Big events in small spaces. Swelling sounds for dark subjects: Titanic, Grey Gardens, Parade. His first year as artistic director of Charing Cross theatre has been full of such equivocal harmonies. And now he directs Death Takes a Holiday, with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, whose other musicals include Grand Hotel, Titanic and Nine.
This should have been the apogee of bittersweetness. After all, the grim reaper is no mere scythe-carrier. He is the main character. But the plot, based on a 1920s play by Alberto Casella which inspired Meet Joe Black, with Brad Pitt, proves to be a silly thing. Maury’s treatment, largely earnest with a sprinkling of jokes, does not redeem it.
Death, having temporarily saved a lovely young heiress from extinction in a car crash, negotiates with her father to let her off the hook indefinitely if he can spend a long weekend at the family palazzo, having a go at being human. So there he is, goggling at his breakfast eggs as a mortal might stare at scrambled skulls on toast, being taught to dance by a flapper, being ogled by a voluptuous maid. All the women fall for him, in the best tradition of death-loving divas. The men are more canny.
As the desirable damsel, Zoë Doano sings vivaciously but acts woodenly. Chris Peluso brings a welcome sepulchral smoulder to Death. Sophie-May Feek gives a luscious cameo in the part of the bottom-waggling, eye-rolling maid. But the evening teeters awkwardly between archness and poignancy.
The music begins with promising Sondheimian edginess but settles into routine sumptuousness. The lyrics clomp: “I slept great. My first breakfast is on that plate.” Southerland keeps the stage constantly whirling, but even his gift for animation cannot snatch this from the jaws of death
