Two years ago, Salisbury Playhouse's artistic director, Joanna Read, mounted a superb revival of The Hired Man, which did both herself, and Howard Goodall's 1980s musical, proud. This collaboration, for which Read also provides the book, is far less successful.
Substituting the Russian revolution for the French - largely for fear of sounding like a pale imitation of Les Misérables - the show takes its inspiration from Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities and tells the story of the Russian-born Lucy Mannersley, who believes herself to be an orphan until she discovers that her father is languishing in a pre-revolutionary Russian jail.
Once dad is rescued with the help of a fleeing aristocrat, Yevgeny, Lucy finds herself caught between two countries and two men: Russia and England, and Yevgeny and Sydney Carton, the flawed but heroic lawyer who loves her.
It's red-blooded, romantic stuff, that doesn't give a toss about history, and largely casts the Bolsheviks as thugs, the English as absolute gentlemen, and the Russian masses as sweetly singing, attractively unwashed peasants. One might forgive the naiveties of the politics if the show caught you up and swept you away. But Goodall's music, although often beautiful and sometimes clever - particularly in the way that much of the second-act music mirrors the first - lacks any big numbers, and Read's book and production lack any impetus at all. The whole thing feels as though it lasts longer than the Russian revolution and, by the end, I longed to put everyone involved up against a wall and shoot them.
The evening's anaemia is summed up in the moment that Lucy's guardian imparts the news that her father is still alive, an announcement he makes with all the passion of someone notifying her that there might be jam for tea.
· Until September 30. Box office: 01722 320333.
