Young Vic, London
***
It is a real boys' night out at the Young Vic, where there is more swash and buckle (not to mention feathers) on show than the British stage has seen for decades. Fight director Renny Krupinski provides the best and most extended sword-fighting I've seen on stage, and the intimacy of the raised cross-shaped playing area that cuts right into the audience adds to the sense of high excitement. And yet there is enough good-humoured send-up to the cut-and-thrust heroics that they never seem over-glorified.
Boys are notoriously reluctant theatre-goers, but Julian Webber's adaptation of the Dumas novel should have them queuing around the block, even if some will find there is rather too much history and plot to swallow at one sitting. In truth, the first half, apart from the fights, is slightly plodding, even though Webber's stagecraft has a wonderfully seamless quality.
It is as if Webber himself isn't particularly interested in all the political intrigue and Cardinal Richelieu's attempts to dishonour the queen, and win himself more political power, by revealing that she has given her diamonds to the Duke of Buckingham. After all, political niceties and historical veracity are beside the point: as far as the audience is concerned, D'Artagnan and his friends are the good guys and anyone wearing red, leather or a sneer is a villain.
Once we've got most of the plot out of the way, the second half comes alive. D'Artagnan's perilous journey to London, to retrieve the Queen's diamonds in time for the grand ball where she must wear them or be publicly shamed, is played out as a thrilling dance in which the musketeers are picked off one by one by sinister masked dancers. Throughout, David Benke's superb music is used like a film score to create atmosphere, pace and sometimes the emotion that might otherwise be lacking.
There are other grown-up touches, such as the playing of the doomed relationship between the unhappy queen and her childlike husband. Graham O'Mara is so good as the blustering monarch that one boy in the audience told him to shut up.
There are cracking performances, too, from Phil Rowson, who makes D'Artagnan an open, likeable boy with just a touch of the country bumpkin, and from Candida Benson as the wonderfully villainous M'Lady.
Until January 13. Box office: 020-7928 6363.
