Review: Only the Brave: Basics Are a Casualty In Wartime Production
By JOSEPHINE BALFOUR
ONLY THE BRAVE George Square Theatre ***
THERE’S a kid at the front of every class who’s there because the teacher wants to keep an eye on him. It’s not that he’s bad so much as his potential is channelled into all the wrong things. You’d like to give him an A for effort and enthusiasm, but he ends up with an F because his attention has wandered and he’s busy annoying the kid next to him.
Like that pupil, Only the Brave has all the right qualities – in this case, it’s an excellent cast, good set, engaging characters and a dramatic plot – but for all the passion, enthusiasm and integrity, the basics just aren’t right.
The romance between Charlie, played by Any Dream Will Do contestant and local musical theatre star Keith Jack, and Belle, played by Niamh Perry from I’d Do Anything, is charming, if seemingly shoehorned in to put bums on seats rather than move the plot forward.
This is a great disservice not only to two talented actors, but to a show with real potential. Their relationship is rather rushed, Jack being unconscious for most of their joint stage time, thus loosing any magic that the pair might have had the chance to build.
Anyone stopping by to check out how these two are getting on after their stints with Sir Andrew may be disappointed by how little time they spend singing.
The show actually revolves around Gerard Bentall and Cassidy Janson, who put in sterling and moving performances as a divided couple justifying their part in the war. It’s this tale of tragedy that should really be the sole focus of the production, yet its impact is lost because of the sheer number of tales being told in such an awkward fashion.
The disjointed structure of the script and music is in evidence through out the show, particularly as the actors break into song. Lyrics like “Oh they had hoped, oh they had planned, how many men lie dead in the sand?”, may play well on the page but not to the ear. The music that stands out often does so for the wrong reasons. Oh Mrs Hitler just seems crass in a production that has gone out of its way to point out that it’s got no bone to pick with the politics, and having a young German soldier ask himself why his side is in the wrong is just inappropriate.
The dramatic Dunkirk beginning is somewhat marred by the Hawaii Five-O music which pushed the scene far into Spring Time For Hitler territory, but perhaps the real problem lies in the length of the show. At 75 minutes it is not long enough to introduce all of the lead characters effectively enough for us to care about them. The few wonderful moments of intimacy, warmth and humour the script has, especially for Gareth Richards’ character Will, are lost between waves of songs with no real hooks to catch the audience’s attention. A rewrite might save it from dying young.
Until August 25
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