Children of Eden 30th Anniversary Celebration Concert – Cadogan Hall

Children of Eden 30th Anniversary Celebration Concert at Cadogan Hall, London.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Stephen Schwartz’s musical Children of Eden is an odd beast. First performed in 1991, Schwartz’s music and lyrics combine with a book by John Caird to tell two Biblical tales from the Book of Genesis. Act I deals with Adam and Eve, while after an interval the action jumps some thousand years to tell the story of Noah and the flood.

After a brief, unsuccessful run in the West End, a Broadway transfer was cancelled and the musical might have been consigned to the bin marked “flops”. But the subject matter, and the production’s ability to accommodate large casts, has made it a perennial community theatre favourite, while musical theatre professionals have come to admire its rich musicality.

Full-scale professional revivals are rare – the only one in London has been at the Union Theatre in 2016, marking the show’s 25th anniversary. More common have been concert productions, such as the one at Cadogan Hall to mark the 30th anniversary.

Delayed several times due to Covid restrictions, the weekend’s performances were further hit by cast illness, with Emma Kingston stepping in to replace Alice Fearn as Eve and Mama Noah, while original musical director Tom Deering also had to drop out, replaced by Theo Jamieson.

Act I starts with Adam Pearce’s God, aka ‘Father’, creating the world, and then populating it with Adam (Carl Spencer) and Eve. The cast is decked out in earthy greens and browns, their lecterns bedecked with ivies and other creepers. While there are moments of levity in the early stages, it’s mostly quite a sedate start, although Kingston gets an early opportunity to shine with ‘The Spark of Creation’, one of the show’s best numbers and whose melody becomes a recurrent theme throughout Act I.

Things kick up a gear with Ruthie Henshall making a guest appearance as the Snake who persuades Eve to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the act which ultimately condemns she and Adam to be expelled from Eden.

It is then that the show’s biggest preoccupation, the relationship between sons and their fathers, really kicks in. Spencer has a mostly sombre role, as Adam keeps his faith in the Father who expelled him and his family, but it is his sons Cain and Abel who give him the biggest challenge. Leslie Garcia Bowman makes for a sensitive Abel, a nice contrast to the fiery, murderous Cain.

Rob Houchen, who has also produced the concert along with various other West End Does… concerts at Cadogan Hall, is in a prime spot to give himself the meatiest role in the piece – but joking aside, this is a character that allows him to excel, bringing a real sense of menace and danger to the role.

And it is Cain’s presence, and eventual split from his family, which justifies the inclusion of the otherwise slow-going Act I. For when Act II starts with Noah preparing his family for the oncoming Flood, it is the Father’s wish to eradicate the world of Cain’s descendants that provokes him to obliterate the world.

Kingston and Spencer reprise their roles as familial parents here, with Houchen and Bowman joined by David O’Reilly as Noah’s three sons. Houchen again gets the meatiest role of the sons here as Japheth, although he is overshadowed by Shan Ako as Yonah, the servant girl he chooses to marry and whom Noah initially rejects because she is a descendant of Cain.

Ako excels with her rendition of ‘Stranger to the Rain’, perhaps Children of Eden’s strange standalone number, exhibiting the character’s fortitude and determination with a clear, powerful rendition.

She gets another chance to deliver a powerful solo with ‘Sailor of the Skies’, but that is soon overshadowed when Kingston – who has already impressed throughout – delivers an astonishingly powerful rendition of uplifting gospel anthem ‘Ain’t It Good’, eliciting a standing ovation just moments before the show wraps up proper, and the entire cast, choir and orchestra receive the same response.

As an encore, Schwartz joins the cast onstage to accompany original London cast member Ray Shell in a rousing rendition of ‘Generations’, the show’s Act II opening number. It’s a fitting finale for a show which is appealing to a new generation of fans, and which will continue to dominate the list of under-appreciated classics.

Scott Matthewman