There is some very stiff competition, but I think Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon might well stand as the maddest musical of all time, certainly in terms of seriously intentioned mainstream work.
It’s not been staged in this country for over 30 years and I had wondered if that was because its story of a magic time-hopping Highland village is now considered to be patronising to the Scottish. There probably is an element of that, and top Scots playwright Rona Munro - who has been brought in to partly rewrite the book - has done stuff like have the time-displaced villagers speak Scots Gaelic to each other and suggest they conjured their ‘miracle’ to escape the tumult of the Jacobite Rebellion. They feel (a bit) more like real people.
Really though I think Munro is here because she’s a bloody good playwright and her comprehensive rewriting of the story of the two Americans who happen to stumble across Brigadoon gives the absurdly flyweight musical a bit of genuine heft.
Originally they were a couple of game-hunting tourists, merrily gunning down wildlife in post-WW2 Scotland. Now it’s set during the war and neurotic Jeff (Cavan Clark) and big, boyish Tommy (Louis Gaunt) are bomber pilots who’ve crashlanded in the wilderness and are now trying to get back to civilization. Tommy is seriously injured. But they’re in luck: today is the one day this century that Brigadoon will appear, and the affable locals take to them in a big way. A rejuvenated Tommy falls madly for wise-beyond-her-years (if you don’t add 200 to her years) local Fiona (Danielle Fiamanya), while Jeff – who one assumes to be gay in Munro’s take – is disconcerted to find himself pursued by the hilariously lusty local lass Meg (a scene-stealing Nic Myers).
I know I should probably be taking the plot on the chin and waxing lyrical about the sumptuous score (if you love graceful folk-infused showtunes with the words ‘bonnie’ and ‘lassie’ in them it’s pretty tip top), Basia Bińkowska’s gorgeous heather-filled set and Drew McOnie’s fluid, dance-filled direction. But the plot is so transfixingly outlandish that I spent a lot of the second half trying to do maths on my notepad. Ten years to the people of Brigadoon will involve their village travelling over 365,000 years into the future - that’s longer than homo sapiens has been around!
And on what is merely day two of their odyssey they not only get a couple of random gatecrashers but disgruntled local lad Harry (Danny Nattrass) threatens to leave the village, which will apparently doom them all to oblivion. These are very messy people but they all seem incredibly chill about what’s happening.
it’s a frivolous show. A huge amount of the first half is consumed with the mundane business of the wedding of local lad Charlie (Gilli Jones) to his sweetheart Jean (Jasmine Jules Andrews). I don’t care about your wedding Charlie! I care about the implications of the fact any children you might have will probably technically live for something like 30 million years and that none of you really seem to have any thoughts about this!
I jest, kind of, but what I would say is that Munro has done such a fine job of updating the Jeff/Tommy bits that it’s a shame the village plot is broadly unaltered: there is some genuine poignant stuff about the men’s war trauma and a very cleverly updated ending, but ultimately the plot was remains too casually goofy to really have you feel invested in anyone’s relationships.
Brigadoon doesn’t get staged much because it is preposterous, but it has lovely tunes and ultimately it’s just very fun that this level of time and care has been pumped into resuscitating what is essentially a curio. Maybe it only deserves to be revived every 100 years itself, but very fun to be living through one of those years
