LOVE STORY

Chichester Festival Theatre, Minerva

23.06.10

“What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died ?”

Whatever you can say, you could set to music, and that's what Howard Goodall has done. You get a chamber opera, a budget Boheme with some serviceable tunes and a sad ending.

Lucky to get Chichester to stage it, with its antithesis, 42^nd Street, tapping and grinning over the way in the Main House.

Rachel Kavanagh's stylish and sensitive staging is set in what looks like a classy Konditorei, with musicians on a dais at one end [seven in the band, three singers] and a black carpet square for the drama, audience on three sides.

The scene changes deserved an ovation of their own. The chamber music recital – a wry homage to Francis Lai's music for the 1970 film – became bed sheets in the love nest, an intimidating dinner table slides in from the foyer. There's a viola joke, two different kitchen islands, practical pasta preparation, with the best spaghetti duet since Lady and the Tramp. Food and music combine again just before Jenny chooses terminal care in hospital – the bad news hits us 80 minutes into the show; her last three months played out in little more than 20 minutes.

Emma Williams made a sparky Jenny, with a lovely singing voice, and Michael Xavier was her preppy lover, totally convincing, and moving at the end when he realises all he has to lose.

Hard not to weep with him as Jenny leaves us with a backward glance at her death bed; another moving moment has Jenny's long-dead Momma [Julia Worsley] consoling her across the work surface.

Good support from the contrasting Dads, too. Rob Edwards as the WASP millionaire, and the excellent Peter Polycarpou as Phil, the emotional Italian immigrant.

I liked the subtle way the wordless chorus were used in café and restaurant, and at the end, the three singers move back on the dais to join MD Stephen Ridley and his sorrowful strings.