Based on the famous 1949 film scripted by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed, the look of this adaptation into what its creator call a “musical thriller” reflects the chiaroscura film-noir look of the original in Paul Farnsworth’s monochrome setting and costumes and Emma Chapman’s lighting; even red roses and whisky lose their colour, everything, except seedy cabaret scenes, reduced to grey tones.
It is the tale of Holly Martins, a hard-up writer of cowboy fiction who arrives in a still-occupied, rubble strewn, post-war Vienna on the promise of a job with his old mate Harry Lime, just in time to attend Harry’s funeral, run over in an accident. But there is something fishy going on, everyone has a different version of what happened and why are the British sector military police involved? The billing describes this as a “musical thriller” but, though the story is told clearly, thrillers need pace, and songs, especially ones that don’t carry the story on, slow things down. It takes the whole of the 90-minute first act feeding in repetitive evidence of deception before there is any real action.
It is then (spoiler coming up, though millions of movie buffs know this already) that suspicions that Harry may not really be dead get confirmation. Though Harry Lime isn’t named in the programme, the character hasn’t been cut. There is a give-away clue in a + beside another character listing.
In the second half, Trevor Nunn and Michael Oakley’s direction speeds things up with chases in near darkness. It is an artificial excitement but it holds the attention,
Orson Welles’s Lime is a hard act to follow and Simon Bailey isn’t given much to build on, though a final operatic duet with Holly delivers drama. There couldn’t be more of a contrast with his doubling as the eccentric academic Crabbit.
The production puts its emphasis not on Lime but on Holly Martins and Harry’s girlfriend Anna Schmidt, now turned into a cabaret singer on a fake passport. Sam Underwood’s Holly comes across as naïve and immature. He is totally out of his depth faced with the chorus of destitute Viennese he keeps encountering. It is difficult to believe that he has been around long enough to have known Harry two decades ago, let alone lived through a world war. You can’t help wondering how Harry intended to exploit him in his black market dealings.
Natalie Dunne gives Anna the frightened rabbit look of a girl who never quite feels safe, especially vulnerable now she has lost her protector, but with a bold bravado in her cabaret numbers. She and Holly both need a friend but there is little chemistry between them.
Gary Milner, Harry Morrison and Alan Vickary are suitably sinister as Lime's underworld cronies and Edward Baker-Duly and Jonathan Andrew Hume very British as Major Calloway and his sidekick Sergeant, referred to as the police though in ambiguous uniforms. A hard-working ensemble become mendicant Viennese and cabaret dancers and everyone gives a speed to changing scenes that contrasts with the too-long songs.
Composer George Fenton, like the other creatives, has notched up previous successes and his songs here are pleasant enough without being memorable, but they certainly won’t dislodge our memories of Anton Karas’s zither theme, which he quotes at a key point. Music can certainly create excitement and drama, but these songs are too static. It is significant perhaps that Lime’s best known speech, about Switzerland and cuckoo clocks, is left spoken. It seems some things aren’t for singing, though I wonder what Sondheim might have done with it.