Somebody, please, shut him up ... Simon Callow gets put away in Merry Wives The Musical. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
As I stepped away from the smouldering wreckage that was the RSC's Merry Wives: The Musical, which opened last night, one thought stuck in my brain. Does it matter if actors can't sing?
It only stands out if you've seen the show, but the reviews in this morning's papers share in a curious conspiracy. Though the critics range from lukewarm to splenetic, they are united in one respect: they graciously draw a veil over the fact that RSC stars Judi Dench, Simon Callow and Alexandra Gilbreath, though admirable in other respects, can't actually hold a tune. At all. This being a musical adaptation of the play, maybe someone should have pointed this out.
Benedict Nightingale of the Times and our own Michael Billington steer well clear of the subject, busying themselves with discussing the score instead. The Independent's Paul Taylor alludes, vaguely, to "a woeful lack of polish in the execution", though frankly the production was so miasmically awful that he could have been referring to anything. Charles Spencer in the Telegraph, though I don't really believe him, says it was all part of the charm: "I'd go a long way to hear [Dench's] strangely affecting singing voice," he claims, "a mixture of honking and huskiness that is weirdly compelling." Weird, yes. Weird in the way that telekinesis is weird. Compelling, no way.
At first I blamed this on my own curmudgeonliness, but plenty of the conversations I overheard at the interval seemed to agree: the singing really was wince-inducing. Paul Englishby's light-fingered score, which steals tricks all over the place, did not sound easy to perform, and, perhaps in recognition of that fact, the RSC stocked up on actors boasting solid musical experience. Scarlett Strallen (previous bookings: Mary Poppins, Mamma Mia!) came close to stealing the show, from a vocal point of view; opposite her Martin Crewes (Woman in White, Les Mis) put up a brave fight with some unforgiving high notes; while the sumptuously voiced Haydn Gwynne (Olivier-nominated for Billy Elliot) almost drowned out everyone else on stage. Is it cynical to point out that these actors receive barely a name-check in today's reviews?
It's true that Shakespearean actors have it hard nowadays: it's no longer enough to bash your way through a yard or two of pentameter, learn how handle a rapier and practise a maximum of two accents (one of them posh; the other comic-rustic). There's a whole multi-tasking world of acrobatic stunts, magic tricks and balalaika-strumming out there if you've any hope of employment. But last night's production featured a cast of two halves: those who were musically up to the job, and those, some of them dames and knights, who weren't.
There's a serious point here, and it picks up on something else I found insufferable about Gregory Doran's adaptation: its self-satisfied assumption that you can cobble together a successful musical just like that. I'm not the world's greatest fan of the genre, but I do have plenty of respect for anyone who can sing a woebegone Lloyd Webber melody while doing the rhumba upside-down. Similarly you have to admire the gritty professionalism that keeps a West End musical powering on through endless seasons of cast changes, mice infestations and audiences who don't comprehend a word.
The best musicals may seem effortless artistically, but, done well, they demand the utmost from their cast. We have too many in London at the moment, say some; well, maybe this one should try its luck, ditch its subsidy and transfer to the West End. It wouldn't survive a week.
