One of the joys of Pedro Almodóvar’s celebrated 1988 movie lies in its debt to theatre: it’s a helter-skelter farce initially inspired, as Almodóvar revealed at a post-show discussion, by Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice. But although this musical version of the movie has been radically revised since its unhappy 2010 Broadway premiere and boasts a sparky performance by Tamsin Greig, it never resolves a basic problem: how to incorporate songs without slowing down the story’s momentum.
Lovers of the movie will still recognise the basic ingredients in Jeffrey Lane’s nifty book. We still see the 42-year-old Pepa trying to cope with being dumped by her lawyer lover. She skitters around Madrid doing movie-dubbing work and leaving messages for the faithless Ivan. But most of the action takes place in Pepa’s flat, which gradually fills up with people in the manner of a Feydeau farce: not only Ivan’s deranged, gun-toting ex-wife and randy son, with his future bride, but a flaky, suicide-prone model and a couple of cops who unwittingly down Pepa’s spiked gazpacho. It’s all screwball fun with an undertow of rueful sadness.
Clearly the makers of the musical have decided that songs will intensify the story’s emotion. So Pepa is allowed to spell out her crisis in On the Verge and the model, Candela, sings of her problems in becoming a terrorist’s moll (a tricky number in the present situation). But, although David Yazbek’s Hispanic-flavoured music and lyrics are perfectly proficient, only one song genuinely enhances the situation. Invisible, sung by Haydn Gwynne as Ivan’s recently incarcerated ex-wife, Lucia, memorably charts the way society treats discarded middle-aged women as pariahs. Even though Gwynne sports a striking pink Courrèges outfit, the costume itself becomes a symbol of Lucia’s desperate desire for attention.
But the chief burden of the show falls on Greig, who captures all Pepa’s essential qualities. She captures the harassed look of a woman who simply wants to speak directly, rather than by answering machine, to her negligent lover. At the same time, Greig conveys Pepa’s gutsy resilience and professional pride. She slaps a feminist lawyer who rudely gives her the brush-off and arches her eyebrows in mock modesty every time anyone recalls her TV or stage performances. Greig reminds us the musical, like Almodóvar’s movie, is ultimately a tribute to its heroine’s capacity for survival.
There is strong support from Anna Skellern, who seductively suggests that Candela’s sexual abandon is more the product of untidiness than promiscuity, and from Seline Hizli as a putative bride induced to orgasm by the Valium-laced gazpacho. Bartlett Sher’s newly simplified staging also keeps the action moving with commendable fluency, Anthony Ward’s design hints at the garish colourfulness of the movie’s vision of Madrid and the costumes evoke Almodóvar’s fashion-magazine fascination with the female form. It all makes for a perfectly pleasant show in which only the songs, in adding depth to character, put a brake on the story’s propulsion.
- Until 9 April. Venue: Playhouse, London. Buy tickets from theguardianboxoffice.com
