A scaffolding structure rises on the stage, its skeletal curves suggesting a soaring castle tower. Ti Green’s set is a jumble of struts, stairs, ladders – and wooden chairs, which dangle and jut out at odd angles and are never used. The effect is of an idea that is still in the process of becoming, but hasn’t yet found its form - and the same effect is created by this new musical adaptation playing on and around the tantalising structure.
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith’s first novel, is told from the point of view of Cassandra, a sharp-eyed, quick-witted teenager, investigating life and love. It has been working magic on generations of men and women since 1948. And the magic lies in the words: detailed, evocative descriptions of nature; sharp insights into people; the transcendent and the mundane companionably yoked: “I am feeling absurdly happy at the moment. Maybe it is because I have fulfilled my creative urge; or maybe it is the thought of eggs for tea.”
Teresa Howard’s book and lyrics grasp the romantic-economic threads of the story and sheer them free of these complexities and nuances and of the richness of the words. We are left with an impoverished, artistic English family with two marriageable daughters encountering a rich, American family with two eligible sons, the elder of whom has inherited the local squiredom, including the freehold of their rented castle. Relationships that develop over time in the novel are crashingly condensed on the stage, resulting in a distorted emphasis on females’ need for men, while Cassandra’s encounter with her sister’s fiance (the American heir) feels unjustifiably crass and self-centred.
Steven Edis’s songs and music (pastiches of blues, ragtime, tango) add emotional colour, particularly to the second half, where Brigid Larmour’s overactive direction finally stills and gives space for feeling. Although the women’s roles offer more scope than the men’s, each of the nine-strong cast is vivid, especially Lowri Izzard’s Cassandra. The magic quality of Smith’s novel, though, eludes capture.
