Emma Rice ends at the Globe as she began. Saucily. With a mix of old and new, borrowed and blue. Romantics Anonymous, her final production as artistic director may be based on a 2010 French-Belgian movie, but it is entirely new as a stage work, and is the first musical to be put on in the ever-glowing Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
The story of a “chocolate savant”, an inspired confectioner who sets out to “break the mould” of a traditional chocolate firm, owned by the man she loves, may come on beaming and winsome, but it contains more than a nod to Rice’s tussles while breaking with established practices at the Globe. It is full of larks: handlebar moustaches twitch beneath berets; neon signs light up at the click of fingers; lovers are hoisted high above the stage, gleefully somersaulting, in a tribute to one of Rice’s earlier romantic shows, The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk. Yet, like the fairytales that Rice loves, Romantics Anonymous is veined with sadness and difficulties. After all, as the heroine points out, chocolate is not simply sweet; what makes it so special is the ripple of bitterness beneath the surface.
Michael Kooman’s music and Christopher Dimond’s lyrics banter and scamper and dip into melancholy. There are echoes of Satie and of honky-tonk, wheezes (not too many) on the accordion, swoops of woodwind and a few teases: “One rule we must enforce/ Don’t think about sexual intercourse.” Among a nimbly multitasking cast, Joanna Riding is outstanding as she turns from grumping to vamping. First a hairnetted overseer, later a blowsy, embarrassing mother in ooh-la-la leopard-skin stilettos and black bra.
Rice’s shows have always welcomed the odd and awkward as well as the chic and sexy. A touching comic scene features a support group for the socially ill-at-ease – the “romantics anonymous” – mumbling intelligently in bobble hats and over-large sweaters. Hero and heroine are not just inhibited but poleaxed by shyness. As the lovesick hero, Dominic Marsh – jumpy and appealing as a young rabbit – is so drenched with nervous sweat on a date that he keeps going into a restaurant lav to change his shirt. Carly Bawden – one of musical theatre’s lovely lights – reads her dining companion questions from index cards, and swoons when anyone looks at her. That is not what you expect from a sweet-singing heroine. Emma Rice does not give us the expected. In letting her go, the Globe has lost a generous spirit.
• Romantics Anonymous is at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, until 6 January
