Ghost Quartet review: Atmospheric musical is a distinctive opener for new Boulevard Theatre

1/9
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis1 November 2019

Great building, strange show. Soho’s Boulevard has been reinvented and reborn as an intimate, in-the-round performance space, apparently of great versatility, by SODA architects and theatre designers Charcoalblue.

It’s a pretty amazing thing to find wedged into a tight corner of Soho and will be even better once it’s been lived in and roughed up a bit.

American writer-composer Dave Malloy’s atmospheric, elliptical song cycle about “love, loss and ghosts”, though performed with brio by a versatile foursome of actor musicians, is less of an obvious, immediate hit. But it’s a distinctive opener for owner Fawn James and artistic director Rachel Edwards that says: this is how we do things here.

Ranging from jazz to folk to cabaret, Malloy’s music conjures up a hazy world of stargazers and storytellers, whisky drunks and unquiet spirits. Scheherazade is a recurring character, as are Edgar Allen Poe’s Usher family. Other stories entwine: of jealous Rose, who made a violin from her sister’s breastbone, and of a horrific accident on the New York subway.

Director Bill Buckhurst – forever to be famous for staging Sweeney Todd in a pie shop in Tooting - keeps things relaxed and convivial. The songs are introduced as if by the track listing for a two-disc concept album. Some are touching, others merely diverting, such as The Astronomer, whose titular hero aspires to sing in church. “Practice, practice!” admonish the other cast members.

They themselves sing beautifully, especially Carly Bawden and Maimuna Memon, who also cover zither, drums and xylophone. Zubin Varla is the father figure behind the keyboards and Niccolò Curradi majors on cello.

They share an easy rapport, and also a few glasses of whisky, with the audience. The final song, The Wind & Rain, is beautiful, and the way the performers cede the stage gradually to us is one of the loveliest moments I’ve witnessed in a theatre recently.

Until Jan 4 (020 3968 6849, boulevardtheatre.co.uk)

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