Even ripped apart and rewritten, Henri Alain-Fournier's novel Le Grand Meaulnes (also known as The Lost Domain) is a striking piece of work. The thorny relationships between its brooding, restless hero Meaulnes, his beloved, beautiful Yvonne and the novel's level-headed yet tender-hearted narrator François gleam with emotion. The petty rivalries and wild dreams of this teenage world beautifully capture the turbulence of adolescent life, and the way its memories are cherished in adulthood.
Alex Went and Peter Fanning's musical version keeps the main themes intact but inevitably it loses much of the richness of detail - not to mention the intensity that the reader's own mind brings to such a fairytale. Characters such as Meaulnes are always better imagined than seen, and no matter how much he contorts his face in an expression of angst, Krishan Nursimooloo does not live up to the part of this great adventurer. It does not help that his voice, although strong, lacks variety and, occasionally, tunefulness.
But then, this is essentially a student production - written, directed and conducted by grown-ups but performed by teenagers from Shrewsbury School, of whom you can forgive much. At times that is not necessary: many of the soloists have lovely voices, and it is a pleasure to watch the subsidiary characters stealing the stage. Simon Hunka, as Yvonne's lovelorn brother Frantz, brings light to the cheesiest of music; so does Kerry Fairclough, playing his lost fiancee Valentine, although the hints of Madonna in her voice suggest she would make a better pop star. The couple's reconciliation at the end of the musical, moments before Frantz and Meaulnes are killed in Went and Fanning's sombre twists to the plot, is touchingly evoked.
The performance suffers mostly from the weakness of the company: the singing is uneven, due no doubt to the fact that only the soloists wear microphones, and the dancing inconsistent in its confidence. You would see work of this ambition and quality from few other schools, but it is hard not to feel that these youngsters are exposed on the Linbury Studio's huge stage, and would fare far better in a smaller fringe theatre.
But that is Alain-Fournier's novel in a nutshell: chasing after the greatest of dreams, no matter how ruinous they might prove to be.
