This note of circus makes sense, styling her as a goblin-like trickster who forces herself into contact with humans through cunning ploys – a stolen gnome here, a returned treasure chest there. Here, Am élie’s emotional journey feels somehow less central, even though, in many ways, Brisson’s performance here is perfect: she grew up touring with Cirque du Soleil, an apprenticeship she completes by hanging off a lampshade to float up to her barrel-shaped tiny home at the top of the stage. In the movie, Audrey Tautou’s gorgeous, curl-framed face did a lot of heavy lifting, enough to stop you feeling the slightness of Amélie’s trajectory. But it feels like the real problem here is that the musical’s all-male writing and directing team tells us a lot about this young woman’s warped psychological landscape, while showing us very little of what she thinks and feels.įollowing the film, Craig Lucas’s book spells out Amélie’s traumatic early life: a father who protected her from all extremes of emotion, even that of loving him a mother who explained, in philosophically rigorous terms, the impossibility of human connection. Is it enough to make ‘Amélie’ enchanting, instead of just gently charming? Almost. And the cast’s accents français are as pungent and phony as knock-off Chanel perfume. Actor-musicians fiddle and stomp their way through ballads that could easily be forgettable. In the title role, Audrey Brisson has a reedy voice that pierces the show’s floaty love songs. So Michael Fentiman’s revival has done its very best to inject some vim and viniagreinto proceedings. When this musical take on whimsical 2001 romcom ‘Am élie’ floated into Broadway a few years back, New York’s critics rounded on it for being too insipid, too sweet, and not nearly French enough. This review is from its run at The Other Palace in December 2019. ‘Amelie the Musical’ transfers to the Criterion Theatre in 2021.
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