Brigadoon review – there’s no heat in the heather in this tame revival

Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, LondonThis version of Lerner and Loewe’s musical has plenty of energy – bagpipes, big voices, drumming galore – but surely it needed more of a story update?Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s postwar musical might seem like an incredulous romance but it holds great potential for updating in its central concept. An off-grid Scottish town called Brigadoon is untouched by time and magically returns for one day every hundred years. No one can leave or else the town disappears forever. When two Americans, Jeff (Cavan Clarke) and Tommy (Louis Gaunt), unknowingly stumble across it and the latter falls in love with Fiona (Danielle Fiamanya on press night), it is all set for a love story with a Shyamalan-like twist (The Village with bagpipes?).Rona Munro’s adaptation does not make enough of this potential, although there is initial promise. The American interlopers are not the hunters of the original story but second world war pilots who have crashed in the Highlands. Tommy is injured, Jeff mentally scarred by war – or so it is intimated. But this goes nowhere beyond a few passing comments (“Wars happen and people get lost inside them,” says Fiona).At Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London, until 20 September Continue reading...

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