Wilton’s is a rough East End diamond. The repair and refurbishment of this old music hall, successfully carried out because of the dogged persistence of Frances Mayhew and her team, has been a real labour of love. The result is exquisite: a building that speaks back and forth between the 19th and 21st centuries, and between beauty and racketiness, with real grace.
The building is a five-star delight, so it’s a shame that the opening show – a stage version of the 1973 movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford – serves it so poorly. It’s not an obvious choice to put this tale, about a couple of 1930s American conmen who take revenge on the New York mobster who killed their friend by scamming him big time, into this space.
But of course, in its heyday in the 1860s, it was home to saucy high-wire acts and Champagne Charlie, a world not all that far from the jazzy, burlesque-soaked atmosphere of The Sting. The tension between show and architecture and the building’s history might have been fruitful, and the trick for the management will be to find shows that play on that. Otherwise Wilton’s will simply become Disneyfied, place where audiences dress up to drink themed cocktails and play at the past.
Peter Joucla’s production is barely competent, and unable to rise to the challenges of an adaptation that fails to reimagine the screenplay as a theatre script. It would require some very clever design and a staging of melting fluidity for this succession of short scenes to translate successfully. There are times when the between-scenes action feels as if it lasts as long as the scene itself. Clunky narration doesn’t move things along and a game cast, often playing more than one role, struggle to bring the underdeveloped characters alive. The project’s lack of imagination is signalled by the fact that the two leads appear to have been selected for their vague resemblance to Newman and Redford.
This could yet prove a rewarding space for theatremakers, but it’s one whose possibilities comes with pitfalls: Fiona Shaw may have been able to make every single word of The Waste Land crystal here, but the acoustics work against less seasoned actors, particularly those fighting losing battles with accents that don’t so much wander all over the American continent as over the Home Counties.
- At Wilton’s Music Hall, London, until 17 October. Box office: 020-7702 2789.
