Brighton Rock, the musical. It was never that convincing an idea but perhaps there could have been a way to bring the dark, queasy tension of Graham Greene's novel to musical life. Not here, however. There are good things about this dramatisation, but the bland music and lyrics keep pulling it off course, so we end up with something like a stick of rock that has been left out in the rain.
The show looks great. Lez Brotherston's atmospheric set of rickety pier walkways and frosted glass subtly suggests the heightened Brighton of the characters' lives, with its contrasting worlds of smoky pubs, cheap lodgings, gaudy attractions and miserable slums.
This is the Brighton that produces Pinkie, the boy-murderer and gang leader at the heart of the tale: Pinkie, the pitiful, pitiless cocktail of Catholic guilt, class hatred and loveless, frayed poverty.
Giles Havergal's adaptation, meanwhile, makes a good job of opening out the involved plot for the stage, explaining the background of the narrative, hinting at the hero-worship that has Pinkie take over the mob once his beloved leader is murdered, and tracing the way he finds himself on a collision course with Ida, a blowsy woman with a sense of justice.
But, almost inevitably, the book's preoccupation with sin becomes simplified. Meanwhile, many of the characters, once they are walking about on stage, appear two-dimensional.
The desperation that drives both Pinkie and Rose, the girl he marries, does not come across. Here Pinkie is nothing like nasty enough,or disturbing enough in his repulsion at the idea of sex; and there is nothing Michael Jibson, despite hard work in the part, can do about it.
Sophia Ragavelas as Rose is sweetly loyal and has a lovely voice but she is not the scrappy, love-starved girl of the book. Ida, the buxom force of life and justice, fares better and is given a splendid performance by Harriet Thorpe, lusciously upholstered in purple.
But there are crucial scenes, in Michael Attenborough's production, that evaporate. The terrible moment when Rose, after the makeshift wedding, asks Pinkie to record a loving message to her and he records only vitriolic hate, does not appal us as it should.
And when the production does achieve tension, fear or pathos, a song rears up and dispels it. John Barry's music seems incongruously without edge and Don Black's lyrics are full of predictable rhymes. This is a Brighton Rock without bite.
Tel 020 7359 4404
