Once review – slick romance skips showstoppers and defies razzmatazz
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Pitlochry festival theatre
This stripped-down show with a maudlin set of songs makes for the most reluctant of musicals, but this is a production that has the confidence to be silent or stately
When Once opened on Broadway in 2012, later to enjoy a run in London’s West End, it was greeted with a degree of surprise. You can see why. In terms of the Great White Way, it is an anti-musical.
Based on the 2007 film by John Carney, with a book by Enda Walsh and songs by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, it is unusual not just in being given a stripped-down production by John Tiffany on a barroom set by Bob Crowley that is all scuffed mirrors, wooden panelling and gloomy corners. And not just in its folksy atmosphere, with its preshow singalong and an ensemble of actor-musicians who muck in without fanfare.
المصدر: The Guardian — Stage