La Maupin – Lion & Unicorn Theatre

La Maupin at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre, London.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

The life of French opera singer Julie d’Aubigny, La Maupin, born 1673, was adventurous and eventful. Myth or fact, rumour abounds, it makes an alluring subject for Fantastic Garlands’ musical.

D’Aubigny wooed men and women and was a fierce swordsperson. Among her many escapades, it was said she rescued a young lover from a convent, by replacing her sleeping body with that of a dead nun, and then burning down the building!

A life of duels and pursuit by the authorities for arson didn’t prevent her from singing at the opera in Marseille and graduating to Paris, where she spent her later years with an aristocratic lover. After her lover’s death, it’s said she retired to a convent, dying at the age of 33.

Olivia Thompson is credited as the writer of La Maupin and one must presume she is composer and lyricist too as no other such creative is listed. The pace is hectic, presumably to echo La Maupin’s whirlwind life, but it becomes wearing. A beautifully sung ‘Old Fashioned Boy’ with a hint of the blues, performed by Olivia Warren, breaks the pace, but then we are into the hurly burly once more until La Maupin arrives at the Marseille Opera. There, Frida Rodbroe shows us what their voice can really do in a lovely rendition of a baroque pastiche ‘The Ballad of the Opera’.

With the constant flight and arrival, it reminded me of Voltaire’s Candide without the philosophical musing, or Bernstein’s eclectic score for the musical adaptation. The folk/punk idiom certainly has a place in music theatre, but a gentler vocal production while holding onto characterisation would have a greater impact. Towards the very end this proves so when we get a superb rendition, again from Warren, of ‘Mine’.

The talented cast of young actor/musicians, Warren, Rodbroe, Megan Armitage and Katrina Michaels plus writer Thompson play multiple roles and sing beautifully in harmony. However it’s often difficult to keep track of characters of diverse ages and means they resort to very broad characterisations to differentiate. Thompson plays her multiple roles with quiet intent and is the most convincing.

Suzy Catliff’s direction makes excellent use of the space in the round, and is inventive, with movement aided by Steve Elias. Robin Soutar, on an “off West End” budget, gives us pleasant costumes.

With some judicious trimming and a less frenetic pace La Maupin could have a greater future. Less incident and more time, as in the opera sequence, or La Maupin’s scene with her marquess at the end, provide moments to reflect.

There is the core of a show here, but it has yet to fulfil its promise.

Leon Ferguson