REVIEW: H R Haitch, Union Theatre ✭✭✭✭
Julian Eaves reviews H R Haitch – A Right Royal Musical Comedy at the Union Theatre.
Julian Eaves reviews H R Haitch – A Right Royal Musical Comedy at the Union Theatre.
As a work in its own right, if you ever wanted to know why it was such a colossal and damaging failure the first time around, then this version of Twang! provides abundant clues.
Shaw doesn’t exactly give us hope, but he paints a picture we can recognise as speaking to us today. It’s a bit of a wait to get there, but more than worth persevering with.
As Privates On Parade celebrates its 40th anniversary, this brilliantly confidant and assured play has lost none of its relevance.
It’s been a long time since I welcomed a score with such eagerness and pleasure, one that has such immediate widespread appeal, and which also instantly creates a powerful sense of character and attitude.
Regretfully, I have to note that I personally didn’t find any work of that quality in this particular offering.
The genius of this work is that it opens up to us what is really great about the writer: his vision of humanity, his craft as a composer of lyrical epics of the struggle of people to find their way in a world full of dangers, challenges, betrayals, confusions and blind-alleys. It leaves you knowing that you will never be able to think about the creator of Peer Gynt or Mrs Alving in the same way again. And you feel so very, very glad about that. At last.