Robert Tanitch reviews Grim at Charing Cross Theatre, London WC2
The Grim Reaper goes to school and falls in love with Cupid. This musical by Fiona O’Malley and Joseph Andrews is billed as a love story to die for. We should be so lucky.
“When will this nightmare end?” sing the cast half way through. It’s a good question. The show lasts two hours with a twenty minute interval.
One thing is pretty certain and that is Death, who has appeared in such masterpieces as Jean Cocteau’s Orphée and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, would never have been seen dead in something so unprofessional as Grim.
The music is unmemorable. The book is grim. The dialogue is grim. The lyrics are grim. The production is grim. The choreography is grim. The design is grim. The actors are miscast.
I have always thought of Cupid as a very agile knavish lad, an excellent if careless archer, shooting off his arrows indiscriminately. Cupid here looks as if he might be in the American football team. Similarly, Death, especially in a musical, is not much fun if she is a boring misery guts.
Vocally, the show is strident. Some singers screech rather than sing. Why are the girl’s legs not covered up in the opening number when everybody else’s legs are? I felt I was watching a high school performance.
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