The Stage

Alvaro’s Balcony

Published Thursday 25 September 2008 at 13:30 by Paul Vale

In seventies Venezuela, a journalist discovers a set of missing European crown jewels in the hands of a humble piano tutor in her twilight years.

Under pressure from the journalist, she tells a story of how she is in fact a member of the Centoluci royal family, missing presumed dead. Naturally, there is an illicit love story at the centre one of the biggest cover-ups in European history.

Sebastian Michael’s book is a rather fun piece of hokum that pays homage to everything from Titanic to Evita. The book works fairly well for an original conceit, but unfortunately Jonathan Kaldor’s score fails to match the emotional level of the story. The song styles rely on either over-expressive emotional ballads that do little to capture the imagination or frothy ‘list’ numbers that raise a smile but are sometimes simply misplaced. Act I ends far too late and what should have been the eleven o’clock number is an unscored, dramatic monologue.

That said, the performances are steady throughout with excellent casting much in evidence. Helen Anker makes for a sympathetic young Princess, well-matched against Norman Bowman’s over-zealous composer, Vigna. Valerie Cutko makes a striking dowager queen and Ben Fleetwood Smyth a suitably ineffectual Prince.

The real work of government is being performed by Gualtieri, played with great style by Andrew C Wadsworth. What remains the most striking feature of this particular production is the production itself, which was possibly of the highest standard this reviewer has seen on the London fringe in ten years.

Mike Lees’ simple design - lavenders, mock marble floors and lots of muslin - makes great use of the space available while Richard Lambert’s languid, atmospheric lighting compliments it perfectly. Nina Morley’s costumes are a sumptuous feast of thirties designs dripping with intricate detail, while her seventies designs immediately suggest period without lapsing into caricature. Even make-up and wigs blend perfectly to make this classy production a winner on so many levels, except sadly where it matters, in the score.