Like the women of Eastwick when devilish Darryl van Horne comes to town, Cameron Mackintosh's newest musical has been tinkered with. Despite (or perhaps because of) Ian MacShane's appearance as a sexually irresistible Lothario, John Dempsey and Dana P Rowe's show was judged too modest a success after opening last year on Drury Lane. Now it has been remodelled for a smaller venue. Out go the more expansive of Bob Crowley's sets, replaced by oversized picture postcards of picket-fence New England. Out go one or two of the feebler tunes. And in comes West End veteran Clarke Peters as a more explosive antihero.
Darryl, played by Jack Nicholson in the movie of John Updike's novel, is the plummest of plum roles, and Peters inhabits it with seamy panache. Aptly, he has the best tunes: the louche Dance with the Devil; the swaggering Glory of Me. He's by far the most likable character: director Eric Schaeffer surrounds him with repressed provincial stereotypes gossiping across washing lines. The casting of Peters, meanwhile, brings to the tale an intriguing racial dimension. When, in front of a blown-up ad for whiter-than-white soap powder, his neighbours complain about "a tide of sin washing up" in their cosy town, it's hard to interpret their unease in anything other than racist terms.
The three witches, thirtysomething women galvanised by sex with Satan, fare less interestingly. Alex, Jane and Suki are like the scarecrow, the tin man and the cowardly lion: the writers allow them one characteristic each. Like their Oz counterparts, they finally learn, in a ghastly closing number, that "everything I needed was there inside of me".
But Josefina Gabrielle, Rebecca Thornhill and particularly Joanna Riding (the sole survivor from the original cast) acquit themselves ably. When, magicked by Darryl and some not-so-hidden cables, the trio soar into the air, they maintain not only their dignity but a lively interaction with the gaping punters beneath their feet.
Whether this refurbished show will itself take flight remains uncertain. In the coarser dialogue between Darryl and the witches, and at several moments of brazen self-parody, one glimpses the sassy, unsentimental musical it might profitably become. But the tone is uncertain. Moments of menace - and, at one point, murder - are played for laughs, and yet a soppy teenage romance unfolds po-faced. The satire must conquer the schmaltz. The Witches of Eastwick should feel like hell breaking loose, but for now, it's still straining at its leash.
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