This musical has had more versions than a cat (or Cats) has lives. Playwright Lillian Hellman went through more than a dozen drafts of the original book. The public got its first taste of the work in 1956 when Hellman read her book and I performed the music -- at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of all places. At year's end, it reached Broadway in a production I liked; but it lasted only a few months, after which Hellman withdrew her participation. Hugh Wheeler provided a new book, and musical numbers dropped in and out during later revivals in New York and England. Bernstein announced himself satisfied with a "final" 1989 version.
For the current Royal National Theatre production, John Caird has incorporated more Voltaire than before and even persuaded Richard Wilbur for the first time to pen a few new lyrics. The resulting show is a knockout from start to finish -- superior to all the previous versions I've seen over the years. And it draws its cast from a fixed roster that figures in six shows over a twelve-month period. There is something to look at even during the Overture: Simon Russell Beale (who plays both Voltaire and Dr. Pangloss) enters and sits on a huge trunk, eventually circumambulating the stage and being joined by the whole company in the final measures.
The trunk proves to contain a series of ever smaller trunks (like Chinese boxes), of which much is made until the process is reversed at evening's end. Not surprisingly, Russell Beale (a national treasure and a former Olivier Award winner) is a joy throughout. In the title role, a pigtailed Daniel Evans is delightfully naive. Alex Kelly is splendid as his beloved Cunegonde and, though no Barbara Cook, is quite up to the treacherous demands of "Glitter and Be Gay." Beverley Klein as the literally half-assed Old Woman is a hoot. And the always ebullient black actor Clive Rowe, who plays a character here called Cacambo and amusingly describes himself as "French-German-Dutch...and wholly African," gets to show his stuff in the second half.
All the other players do themselves proud. Director Caird gives us some wonderfully colorful pictures -- such as soldiers with bayonetted rifles in Bavaria, stamping dancers with three onstage guitarists in Spain, a strawhatted and book-carrying populace in El Dorado, and masked revelers at a Venetian carnival. This is a Candide for the ages.
