Aspects of Love

Published Wednesday 12 September 2007 at 11:40 by Mark Shenton

At the Newcastle premiere of a new touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1989 musical Aspects of Love, it was felt necessary to issue a public health warning, with signs cautioning that the show “contains scenes of an adult nature.” One actress bares her breasts and two women kiss. But while it is true this is no Cats or Starlight Express, this mature, reflective look at romantic entanglements and disillusionment is not prurient or sensationalist.

It is, in fact, a daringly modern musical of brooding obsessiveness, delicately patterned around a series of relationships that are woven among a group of variously self-obsessed, essentially unlikeable characters. As the lives of an ageing English writer George and his nephew Alex - the latter just 17 when we first meet him - dovetail between three women in their lives, a complex web of romantic and sexual needs are exposed. Alex introduces his French actress girlfriend Rose to George, and they take up with each other, producing a child, Jenny.

Eventually, across the 17-year passage of the story, Alex meets the teenage Jenny - and they fall in love as well.

It’s a hard, sometimes bitter tale of a world in which, as the lyric refrain endlessly puts it, “life goes on, love goes free.” It produces a score from Lloyd Webber that contains some of his most tender, heartfelt melodies, and Nikolai Foster’s production astutely locates the pain and longings within this haunting emotional landscape.

He does this by daring to concentrate on the characters, not the daunting spectacle that overwhelmed Trevor Nunn’s original London staging. While designer Robert Jones has provided an atmospheric series of interweaving vertical towers that reconfigure themselves subtly to create different settings, the focus is on the even busily interweaving lives of the characters, beautifully served by an exemplary cast.

David Essex brings a gravelly, worldly charm to George, and Shona Lindsay’s shimmering soprano lends Rose a vivacious, elegant musicality. Matt Rawle’s Alex may sound a little strident at times, but he’s a strong, persuasive actor.