London Critics Don't Give a Damn for This 'Gone with the Wind'

LONDON — The reviews for the musical version of "Gone With the Wind" are in and they're not pretty.

One London critic said he felt like screaming every time a new song started. Another said the production felt like a cartoon-strip account of a dated pop classic.

The Times and the Guardian newspapers each awarded the show only two out of five stars.

Only one critic — Paul Taylor from the Independent newspaper — failed to give a thrashing to the West End production that opened this week.

But even his review was lukewarm.

"The show is neither as bad as one feared not as good as one has a right to expect," he said.

Taylor said the production benefited from a score enriched with blues, gospel music and spirituals.

"All the same I was left wondering whether, on the whole, this quixotic enterprise takes us any deeper into the inner life of Gone With the Wind," he said.

The musical had its much-anticipated premiere Tuesday night and attracted a star-studded audience that included actress Joan Collins and broadcaster David Frost.

Directed by Trevor Nunn of "Cats" fame, the 3 1/2-hour production stars American Jill Paice as Scarlett and Scottish pop singer Darius Danesh as Rhett.

It was written by a first-time playwright from California, Margaret Martin, who chose to be more faithful to the 1936 novel than the 1939 film.

"Sadly I often found myself wishing the musical just wasn't a musical," Benedict Nightingale wrote in the Times. "The rhymed lyrics are pretty flat."

Perhaps the most scathing review came from Charles Spencer at the Telegraph.

"Jill Paice is pert, pretty and full of pep but she misses the viciousness and eroticism the role also demands," he said. "Darius Danesh, meanwhile, seems to be giving a stilted impersonation of Clark Gable rather than supplying anything original of his own."

And Spencer agreed that the musical numbers are weak.

"The songs seem constantly to interrupt the proceedings rather than deepening or advancing the narrative," he said.

Spencer added that John Napier's "wooden design does almost nothing to capture the visual glory of the American South and the burning of Atlanta is a pathetic anticlimax — just a lot of smoke and orange lights and a barely smoldering Confederate flag."

Napier also designed sets for "Cats," "Starlight Express," and "Les Miserables."

It may be relevant to note that the major reviews were all written by men. Women who have seen the production seem to view it more favorably. And the show consistently received standing ovations during previews.

"I thought the show was very entertaining and all the women sitting around me seemed to feel the same way," said Sarah Birtles, a British mother of two.

But London's theater critics are notoriously hard to please.

Michael Billington of the Guardian said there was something extravagantly pointless about the whole enterprise.

He asked why anyone should revive a novel that obstinately views history through the wrong end of a telescope.

"Commendably the show seeks to avoid turning into a nostalgic paean, as the movie does, to old southern values," he said. "Far and away the best moment comes with Mammy, Prissy and all the black slaves who have kept plantation life going join forces to sing 'all men fight for freedom from the moment of their birth.'"

But in the end what Billington craved was "less a repeat of Gone With the Wind than a complete reversal of it: one that tells the whole story from the slaves' viewpoint and stresses the fact that large numbers ran away to join the Union armies."

GLOSSARY

In the land of pubs and the Union Jack they're not all that familiar with the Old South world of plantations and the Bonnie Blue.

So when the musical version of Gone With the Wind opened in London this week, the producers published a glossary inside the program to help Brits understand the American South.

Here are a few of the definitions:

The Troop — A Georgia cavalry unit organized the day the state of Georgia seceded form the Union.

Ku Klux Klan — An organization first formed in 1866 by veterans of the Confederate Army to terrorize freed slaves and scallawags.

Scallawags — From the British word meaning "rascal." Term used to describe Southerners who sought personal profit from the American Civil War or who collaborated with Yankees or Republicans during Reconstruction for their own gain.

Yankees — A native or inhabitant of a Northern U.S. state or a Union soldier during the American Civil War.

Falderdol — Nonsense.

Carpetbagger — Word used to describe a Northerner who came to the South after the American Civil War to profit during the period of Reconstruction at the expense of the Southerners.

West Point — U.S. Military Academy located in southeast New York on the bank of the Hudson River.

Bonnie Blue Flag — A blue flag with a white star in the center was the unofficial banner of the Southern states after secession. It may have been modeled after the flags of South Carolina, Florida, or the "Lone Star" state of Texas. The term "Bonnie Blue" comes from the title of an extremely popular marching song of the era.