Wot no dry ice?

A mystical musical without the requisite mist, and other cultural happenings

Georgina Onuorah as Fiona MacLaren in Brigadoon at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. Photo: Mark Senior

Imagine you’re going to bring a musical set in a mystical, and misty, Scottish village, so far up in the Highlands that it might not even really exist on earth, to a gorgeous theatre immersed in a lush, tree-filled park.

What I’ve seen

How, then, will you design the set? Give it a naturalistic backdrop, maybe a rocky, heather-covered crag? Or a damp, deep-scented forest of Scots pines? Or how about making it look like a three-star chalet in an unfashionable part of the Lake District?

Brigadoon, running now at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre (the first production in London for about 35 years, possibly for Reasons), is one of the weirdest musicals I’ve ever seen. Scottish writer Rona Munroe’s new adaptation sticks fairly closely to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s original preposterous romance inserted into a frankly very disquieting tale of the supernatural, with another far darker love story running alongside it, but simplifies some things and tweaks others.

It has immensely pretty music but as a romance it’s unsatisfying, leaving more questions than answers. As a parable of survivor’s guilt, which feels a bit like where Munroe is going with it, it makes more sense of its nonsense but doesn’t quite land.

In this version, two crashed American WWII fighter pilots, Tommy and Jeff (Louis Gaunt and Cavan Clarke), find themselves wandering, injured, through the Highlands, when they stumble upon Brigadoon, a village not marked on their map, where the charming, slightly oddly-dressed citizens are preparing for the wedding between Jean Maclaren and Charlie Dalrymple (adorable Jasmine Jules Andrews and Gilli Jones, who are totally convincing as giddy young lovers who absolutely cannot wait to be married to each other).

They are welcomed, given food and drink, and invited to stay for the wedding, and Tommy inevitably falls head over heels for Jean’s elder sister Fiona, played on the night I saw it by Georgina Onuorah (she shares the role with Danielle Fiamanya). Onuorah stole the show in the theatre’s last production, Shucked, in the secondary, more interesting female role of Lulu, and her immense charisma is a bit wasted here, though her fabulous singing voice still makes an impact, and you can see her star quality even though Fiona doesn’t have a lot to do but gather heather and fall implausibly in love.

But what does Charlie mean when he gives thanks that “the miracle” was postponed for his wedding? Why is Jean’s neighbour Harry so angry at everyone? And why is the village so endlessly shrouded in mist?

Well, it isn’t, which is one problem, since they keep going on about the mist (there’s even a song about it), and yet the village and its environs remain resolutely dry and clear (no dry ice? not even a puff?). The fact that the village is clinging to a hillside is indicated by making the cast tramp up and down a zigzag ramp in tasteful timber that is less craggy precipice and more Centre Parcs wheelchair access. And the prominent tree trunk lying on the stage has a very visible seam in it which is so glaring that once you’ve seen it you can’t stop looking at it. One of the actors actually covered it with his foot at one point, in what appeared to be an unconscious act of pain management.

Anyway, the music is, as I said, delightful. Almost Like Being in Love is probably the most famous number, and I loved Charlie’s song I’ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean, and Entrance of the Clans/Wedding Ceremony. My Mother’s Wedding Day, sung by lustful milkmaid Meg (Nic Myers, owning the tart part with vivacious aplomb), is very funny, as is her recounting of her colourful relationship history, The Love of My Life, though I’m not sure why Jeff is quite so frightened at the prospect of a roll in the heather with this delightful young woman.