‘You know, I’ve by no means understood the superstition about Friday the thirteenth,” says budding author Nic (Michael Karl-Lewis). If solely he knew he was in For You I’d Wait, a soft-rock musical concerning the terrorist assault on the Bataclan theatre on 13 November 2015, he may need bitten his tongue. Or the writers Sophie Golby and Tom West might have bitten it for him.
Contemporary off the airplane (nobody within the present has heard of Eurostar), Nic lodges along with his sister Dani (Gemma Pearce) and her girlfriend Renee (Billie Kerr). His new house is praised in tourist-board lyrics (“Paris, the town of ardour / Wander beneath the Eiffel Tower”) whereas he waits for his sweetheart Lily (Olivia Walker-Towards) to affix him from the UK. “I’m standing on the sting of the world,” she sings. “I’m trying within the eye of the storm.” Is it actually that far to Paris from Potters Bar?
There may be yet one more couple to fulfill – pasta fanatic Christophe (Jerome Lincoln) and his fiancee Eloise (Charlotte Hannan), an Oscar Wilde nut (“He’s my favorite!”) shocked to study that her idol is buried at Père Lachaise – earlier than these lives converge within the eleventh arrondissement. “What occurred that evening will all the time hang-out me,” sings Nic. Nicely, fairly.
It isn’t essentially a poor concept to make a musical a few harrowing topic (consider London Street) however it will be encouraging to really feel the writers’ analysis had gone past watching the Netflix documentary that supplied their preliminary inspiration. When you’re going to have a forged talking English in their very own accents, and also you’re intent on making a present a few terrorist atrocity that includes nothing Parisian apart from references to the odd landmark, it appears perverse to not stick nearer to residence. Wouldn’t 7/7 have sufficed?
Exhausting to say whether or not rewrites may enhance a present susceptible to repetition (two consecutive numbers contain folks leafing by the identical photograph album) and cliche (“I’m on the lookout for a strategy to survive / On this loopy messed-up life”) whereas providing little selection in idiom (a number of songs reference turning again time or throwing a lifeline). However they couldn’t harm.
For You I’d Wait is at Turbine theatre, London, till 21 Could.
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