Picture: Peter Mould
Ludwig: Unfinished Business continues at the Front Room at Assembly @ St Andrew Square until 30 August 2026.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Actor-musician Mike Hatchard’s engaging impersonation of Beethoven brings new meaning to ‘triple threat’ musical theatre. It also offers a fun morning out.
Avoiding dancing and also singing, Guy Masterson directs Hatchard’s physicality and musicianship firmly towards his strength – pianistic acting – in order to conjure up Ludwig’s rivals: Mozart, Haydn and Bach.
Mingling with this heavyweight trio are Salieri, who is swiftly dismissed as nowhere near rivalrous enough; Stockhausen, who is praised for following through Beethoven’s errors; and rock ‘n’ rolling Chuck Berry who receives the fondest attention.
Musical excerpts from all these composers are indulged in and ornament Ludwig’s autobiography. Hatchard’s accurate recall of every example has an improvisatory feel. In the character of Ludwig, he appropriately chastises himself regularly for swearing in accompaniment to telling stories of encounters with the two fellow musicians he had met, and in the case of Bach, knowledge of his music and reputation.
Love interest comes in rondo form with repeated references to ‘Für Elise’, long a staple of school music room ‘Bagatelle’ tournaments, the twisting opening of which also tunes in nicely to a UK ambulance siren. For Ludwig the melody evokes a romantic scenario he isn’t prepared to reveal details of.
The invention of a ringtone focuses jokes about the music of the future (the promised ‘unfinished business’), as the famed opening of Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 5’ is bellowed diaphragmatically – ‘ha, ha, ha, hah’. Ludwig cheekily insists that this scores better than Mozart’s persistent inscription of his name at every perfect cadence!
And so we roll on, since ‘music lives, fights, bites, bleeds and leaves scars’ and there had to be a next Mozart. And a successor to Haydn, the dedicatee of the first piano sonata, because he kindly took over Ludwig’s training when Mozart died. Detours concerning Ludwig’s student life, duelling and spending time in jail are interpolated while Hatchard performs prodigiously on Ludwig’s ‘Broadvod’ piano (Broadwood), sometimes back to front.
You have to be there to witness the virtuosity of this intriguing homage co-written by Hatchard and Masterson. There is no pressure to applaud whatsover as Ludwig of the Beetroot field simply cannot hear you.
Charlotte Purkis
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