‘Rebecca’, by Michael Kunze and Sylvester Levay, two of the most successful German-language musical theatre composers, had its world premiere at the VBW-theatre Raimund Theater in Vienna, Austria, in September 2006, where it went on to play to sold-out houses in three seasons, and where it is currently enjoying a successful revival.
Rebecca, with an orchestra of 18, will be directed by Alejandro Bonatto (director of the critically acclaimed production of Donizetti’s ‘Rita’ and the upcoming production of Francis Poulanc and Jean Cocteau’s ‘The Human Voice’ at Charing Cross Theatre later this month).
It has a new English translation by Christopher Hampton (two-time Tony Award winner Best Score & Best Book for ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ & ‘The Father’) and Michael Kunze.
Rebecca, with 22 original songs, is a gripping thriller full of intrigue and surprises that sticks closely to the original novel. Wealthy Maxim De Winter brings his naïve new wife home to his Cornish estate, Manderley, where the manipulative housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, resents the new wife’s intrusion. She persuades her that she is an unworthy replacement for the first Mrs. De Winter, the glamorous and mysterious Rebecca, who perished in a drowning accident, with tragic results...
The world-famous novel was also turned into a celebrated Alfred Hitchcock film in 1940, starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, George Sanders and Gladys Cooper. It was nominated for 11 Oscars, winning two awards; Best Picture and Best Cinematography.
It’s staged surprisingly cheaply. Bargain basement video projections – a churning sea; an obscurely rendered boat house – plus predictably liberal use of smoke and mist combine with Mandalay’s dully implacable interior whose cheerless rooms under the gimlet eye of Mrs Danvers make a far from seductive shrine to the late Rebecca. As the unnamed new wife, Lauren Jones is all bitten fingernails and shrunken shoulders, thrust into a macabre psychodrama whose nuances she is initially poorly equipped to understand.
Even with that, the psychological aspects of du Maurier’s work are replaced by melodrama that rarely manages to engage to the degree that the book, or Hitchcock’s film, managed so brilliantly. While the German language original has been lauded, one fears that its London version may be better one day lost to the waves.
2023 | West End |
West End |
Videos