Review: Aspects Of Love At The Menier Chocolate Factory
Published on Tuesday 27th July, 10.00am, Written by Guest Contributor
The Menier Chocolate Factory is making quite a habit of producing new, stripped-down versions of much-loved musicals.
This time around, the focus is on Aspects of Love, the 1989 Trevor Nunn/ Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about various love affairs across the generations. The show was based on a 1955 novel by David Garnett, and gave the world the song Love Changes Everything, and made a star of Michael Ball – which we can all be grateful for.
Aspects of Love is on at the Menier Chocolate Factory
This is Aspects of Love’s first major London revival, and Trevor Nunn who directed the original production has taken the reins at the Chocolate Factory, who are building a reputation for their reinventions of well-known shows. Recent Menier productions of La Cage aux Folles and A Little Night Music have gone on to wow Broadway and the West End, and there is no reason why Aspects of Love won’t go on to do the same.
This more intimate Aspects still has the same soaring, anthemic ballads and tumultuous romantic entanglements, but redesigned as a chamber piece it is more affecting than its somewhat overblown big brother.
What is most surprising, perhaps, is that this new streamlined version has come from its original creators and not a new creative force. It’s commendable that director Trevor Nunn chose to have another crack at it, alongside composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has pared-down his original arrangement significantly. The 1989 production had almost 40 scene changes and a 17-strong orchestra, but now makes use of a permanent set and seven musicians – and amazingly – it works. While Webber has successfully reworked his score without losing any of his trademark aplomb, Nunn has surprised further by delivering a staging that has a vitality and friskiness more akin to Spring Awakening than a 20-year-old ALW musical.
The stand-out tune, Love Changes Everything, is still as powerful as ever, but it is now rivalled by other numbers that it previously outshone; particularly Hand Me The Wine And The Dice and There Is More To Love.
Aspects of Love 2010 is a well-cast, well-staged show and this intimate, intense and unashamedly romantic musical deserves to be another huge hit for the Menier.
Review by: Colin Ferguson
