You have to admire the ambition of Ruby in the Dust, a young company specialising in new music theatre, who here turn their attention to Guy de Maupassant’s second novel of 1885. With its Parisian belle époque setting and its welter of political and romantic intrigues, the story of a provincial young man’s progress through the ranks of newspaper journalism and the beds of his acquaintance’s wives is a juicy prospect.
Sadly, this stage version is a confused mess, with a disastrous lack of narrative drive and definition of character. It’s never clear what prompts the anti-hero Georges Duroy to his multiple cruel deceptions and manipulations; and in Linnie Reedman’s effortful production, the cast’s naive attempts to conjure a sense of seedy sexiness look forced – it takes more than basques, suspenders and relentless pseudo-saucy eye-rolling to suggest moral turpitude.
Joe Evans’s score, meanwhile, is predictable but unmemorable, dominated by clichéd French accordion and tango. There’s plenty of hard work on display, but little focus; what the show desperately needs is dash and panache.