A musical adaptation of Margaret Mitchell‘s Gone With the Wind is getting a critical pasting in London. From the Times‘ review of “this tuneless assault on the English language”:
And those songs! They began to scale the depths. Refrains included “Born to Be Free”, “These Are Desperate Times”, “The Wings of the Dove”, until the inevitable “Tomorrow Is Another Day”. This was cliché orchestrated in the hope it would make it less of a cliché. It merely magnified the assault on the language. And still there was not a memorable tune, a curious crime when the 1939 film had one of the greatest theme tunes ever, by Max Steiner. The original cast recording from this stage musical would be a gift for your worst enemy.
Vanessa Redgrave‘s performance in another British stage adaptation, of Joan Didion‘s The Year of Magical Thinking, is faring better with critics.
markathitakis.com 