Queen of the Mist – Charing Cross Theatre

Picture: Stephen Russell

Queen of the Mist continues at the Charing Cross Theatre, London until 5 October 2019.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

In 1890s America, Niagara Falls had become well known for people’s desire to combine vaudevillian performance with stunts that were rather less death-defying than death-inviting. Perhaps the most well-known was the tightrope walker Charles Blondin, who crossed the 1,100ft gorge several times.

Blondin makes a brief appearance in Queen of the Mist, Michael John LaChiusa’s musical about Anna Edson Taylor, who would become the first person to go over the Falls in a barrel and survive. His appearance is fleeting, which suggests he gets the best deal from this overlong, uninspiring mess of a musical.

Maybe that is a little harsh. LaChiusa’s music is lush and redolent of the era, Michael Starobin’s orchestrations and musical director Connor Fogel’s eight-piece band producing a rich sound, enhanced by some close harmony work by the seven-strong cast. And Tara Usher’s set design, converting the Charing Cross Theatre’s traverse space into a mass of wooden shelves, curved to give the impression that we, too, are in a barrel, is gorgeous.

But that, largely, is the extent of the praise due. For all the splendour of LaChiusa’s score, it quickly becomes clear that it is pretty much all of the same pace and style, in dire need of some variety. Something similar can be said of Trudi Camilleri’s performance, which insists on keeping Taylor – who is on stage for nearly the whole show – at an inscrutable distance from the audience.

Dom O’Hanlon’s direction, which often seems unable to utilise the Charing Cross’s unique performance configuration satisfactorily, is partly to blame for this. An opening sequence, in which would-be teacher Taylor flits from city to city, always one step away from her landlords’ final demands, should be a light and amusing introduction to the character, a contrast to the deep sadness within her. Instead, it’s all a bit beige.

Will Arundell’s spirited performance as Frank Russell, the manager with a drink problem who agrees to help Taylor with her Niagara Falls stunt – which, she believes, will bring her the fame and fortune she has always craved – does bring a welcome change of character in Act I.

But, as befits a story which is hued on fact, Arundell pretty much disappears for most of Act II, Taylor and Russell parting ways shortly after her successful traversal of the falls. A brief reappearance, with a drunkenly louche “substitute Anna” (Emily Juler) enlivens things, while at the same time feeling all the more out of place for doing so.

And that is because Act II – which documents the lack of success Taylor faced after her stunt – is such a long downer. Taylor attempts to relate her story at speaking events – “That drone/That monotone/The bore…” sing the ensemble – and it’s hard to disagree.

And while even a fall from grace can make for interesting theatre, here Taylor doesn’t so much spiral towards oblivion as slump to the floor. A lengthy and protracted sequence in which the dying Anna meets the dead spirits of friends, family, and general acquaintances she previously encountered in Act I is so dull that even the lead character bemoans its length, and once more the audience’s feelings are divulged on stage.

In all, one wonders what Queen of the Mist is trying to say. In the hundred-plus years since the real-life events it portrays, our society has become ever more filled with people who want celebrity and the promise of untold riches that follow, only to find that such fortune rarely exists. Somewhere within the two and a quarter hours that this musical runs, there is a contemporary moral lurking. Sadly, this production seems determined to keep it hidden.

Scott Matthewman