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AllMusic Review
Martin Guerre [London Cast Recording] Review by William Ruhlmann
For their third musical following Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg chose the true story of 16th-century Frenchman Martin Guerre, who left his village for many years only to be replaced by an impostor. The story has been the subject of several artistic treatments, including the films The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) and Sommersby (1993). But for Boublil and Schonberg, whose large-scale musicals tend to be hung on large-scale subjects like the Vietnan War, it seems slight, a modest mystery with a sexy tag (Guerre's wife, you see, has accepted the impostor). Not surprisingly, then, the writers have tricked out their version with weightier concerns, to wit: In this telling, the story is told against the backdrop of the early struggles of the Reformation, so that the issue isn't so much, "Is he or isn't he Martin Guerre?," but instead, "Is he a Catholic or a Protestant?" And in this version, there's no mystery at all -- the impostor doesn't even intend to deceive the villagers, but their desire for Martin Guerre's return (so he can sire a Catholic heir) overwhelms him. When the musical opened in London on July 10, 1996, it was savaged by reviewers, and after limping along for a few months was substantially revised for a more successful reopening on Nov. 11. This London cast album, recorded from July to September, thus captures a show in transition, which may help explain why the lyric sheet doesn't quite match what's sung. The onstage difficulties of the story are less bothersome on record, though the plot remains difficult and not very interesting to follow. The main problem is that, despite the usual over-orchestrated musical bombast disguising relatively simple, repetitive melodic lines (closer to Philip Glass than Mozart), there are no memorable songs on the order of Les Mis's "On My Own" or Miss Saigon's "The American Dream." In fact, much of the score sounds like outtakes from Les Mis, in the service of a much smaller and less comprehensible story.
5014636205925
CAST CD59
First Night Records, 1995
Country: UK
Good condition
C09
