See What I Wanna See – Jermyn Street Theatre

The cast of See What I Wanna See at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London. Picture: Jamie Scott-Smith

See What I Wanna See continues at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 3 October.

Rating: two stars ★★✩✩✩

A collection of short stories rarely makes the best material for a coherent full-length musical, a point proved by Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See, a misfiring hotchpotch of trite tropes that one of London’s best Fringe casts struggles gamely to rescue.

Based on short stories by Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa, the show’s 2005 Off-Broadway run was most notable for the casting of Idina Menzel in her first role since originating Elphaba in Wicked. And here, while the cast has fewer Tony Awards under their belt, they are collectively as strong as you’re likely to see on the London Fringe. Cassie Compton’s expressive vocal ability is perfectly suited to small, unamplified venues such as the Jermyn Street Theatre, and she is matched by both Marc Elliott and Mark Goldthorp, the latter of whom is able to bring his ample comedic skills to a succession of slight roles.

Act I is the least unsatisfying. A noirish tale of a dead body in 1950s Central Park, New York, each character gives a very different take on the events, from Elliott’s thuggish thief to Compton’s nightclub chanteuse and her husband, the victim. Here comes a little spark of ingenuity as Goldthorp’s corpse is reanimated via the intervention of a psychic medium, played by Sarah Ingram.

With the pair mirroring each other’s movements and occasionally sharing the narration duties, it however in no way makes up for the words put into Elliott’s character’s mouth, in which he rapes the nightclub singer, only for her to agree for him to fight her husband, offering herself up as a trophy for the victor. While it’s a scene in a story set six decades ago and clearly being narrated by a psychopath, it’s unsettling to see such a scenario being offered up for entertainment purposes in modern musical theatre.

The theme of the Act I tale (as with a short scene which, played out from two points of view at the top of each act, performs the function of ‘unnecessary prologue’ each time) is, one surmises, that perceptions of a story vary greatly depending on who is narrating. But the Act II takes a very different take on the nature of truth, as a priest who loses his faith in the wake of 9/11 fabricates a story of a forthcoming visitation by Jesus with the intention of showing the world that there is no God. Jonathan Butterell’s priest encounters a string of one-dimensional characters struggling with their own direction in life, from Compton’s actress to Elliott’s newsman. Far more well realised is the priest’s aged atheist aunt, with Ingram impressing as the cynic who ends up being wiser than anyone.

Unfortunately, any morals on the nature of truth and perception are lost in the lumpen writing of Michael John LaChuisa, who writes the book and all the songs. Musically there are glimmers of hope in Adam Lenson’s production, with some recitative work that is reminiscent of the best of Lloyd Webber – but it comes strapped to songs that, like the worst of Lloyd Webber, rely on repetition to make up for the lack of any distinctive melodic hook. The result is an unsatisfying musical whose saving grace is its cast.

See What I Wanna See? I wanna see these actors again, in roles more deserving of them.

Scott Matthewman

www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk