Yahoo Finance The Time Traveller’s Wife musical review: Low on imagination
The Time Traveller’s Wife musical review and star rating: ★★★
Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 book was never intended for the mass market, but it ended up selling over 8 million copies, becoming one of the seminal books of the naughties. A megabucks film adaptation followed, leading to huge interest in this first musical adaptation. It enlists prestigious sonic brains Joss Stone and Dave Stewart, formerly of The Eurythmics, for a score that is often transportative, even if Bill Buckhurst’s production feels too safe.
In their twenties, Henry and Clare meet in real-time in a library, but they’ve already met before, when he time travelled to meet her as a young girl and a teenager. They get together, only for Clare to spend much of her time waiting around for Henry to stop time-hopping from one decade to another and just chill out on the sofa for a night or two.
There are some decent vocal performances, including Joanna Woodward’s, who belts impressively, especially in act one’s catchy, yearning One Day. Who Are We, at the end of act one, the only properly uptempo choreographed number, is also catchy, as is the choral Love Wins the Day which closes the show.
Beyond the music it’s a little less gripping. Buckhurst’s production looks and feels rather anodyne, with much of the action skimming the surface. Scenes often linger on Jenny left alone doing her work as a flower arranger, and hanging out with friends, but especially in act one it rarely feels gripping and takes too long to get going.
Lauren Gunderson’s script also feels dated, with many of the characters sharing cursory exchanges in clipped language between songs rather than finding opportunities to extrapolate ideas into more authentic scenes. I have an admission: I haven’t read the book, but taking the stage version as a stand-alone product (as you should) the concept ends up feeling vague and under-cooked.
For a start it’s never clear why Mike needs to keep popping off into different eras in the first place, which makes the whole concept feel a little flimsy. I think the idea is to use time travel as a metaphor for the idea that all time spent is high quality, even if it’s only a few minutes here and there. It’s a fine point, even if David Hunter’s Henry and Woodward’s Clare never have chemistry that ignites, not displaying much in the way of thrilling moments of romance or devoted unity. The set, formed of largely beige rectangular towers displaying generic-feeling video displays, hardly inspires, and the movement feels over-choreographed and heavy-handed, especially in a key scene at the beginning of act one where Henry is transported atop dancers dressed in black.
Kudos to Chris Fisher for cooking up some fine illusions in making Mike disappear, including one particularly ‘omg how did they do that’ moment where he vanishes from behind a frosted glass door. I left singing Love Wins the Day, with the song’s theme of never missing a moment touching something of a nerve. But there isn’t the heart-string-plucking I’d hoped for from a musical with tragedy at its core.
The Time Traveller’s Wife musical is playing at the Apollo Theatre
