Too Close to the Sun

Synopsis

Author and Nobel Prize-winner Ernest Hemingway, battling the rigours old age, takes solace in the company of his young secretary. His wife, tolerating this liaison so as not to lose him, is unaware that the secretary has a secret agenda - to become wife number five and inherit his estate. The arrival of Rex, an old school friend, adds a further complication, as he tries to secure the film rights to the life of the notorious writer. With bribery, lies and manipulation, Rex plays a dangerous game to achieve his goal, but in this suggested account of events leading to Hemingway s death, can there be any winners?

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 27 July 2009

Too Close to the Sun, or “To close on the Sunday”: either way, it’s a drab little disaster at the Comedy, and no laughing matter. A four-hander musical about the last days of Ernest Hemingway before he shoots himself on his Idaho ranch in 1961 sounds about as promising an idea as the one about the Mexican who pushed his wife over a cliff in order “tequila”.

Talking of gringos, have you heard the one about the Mexican with a sore throat? Known as “Dry Martinez” in the macho chit chat of old Ernest and his school pal Rex, who has flown in from Hollywood to try and sign up the rights to a film biography. He’s obviously already signed up Donald Duck.

And why is a woman over fifty like the North Pole? Everyone knows where it is but no-one wants to go there. Roberto Trippini and John Robinson (the former is helping the latter on a re-write of his 2005 disaster Behind the Iron Mask) should recycle this stuff f...

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Latest User Review

Richard Voyce - 30 July 2009:

I’m troubled. Deeply, deeply troubled. I’ve just come back from seeing Too Close To The Sun at The Comedy Theatre, and after reading some of the most excoriating (and entertaining) reviews of recent years (John Holt, as accurate and witty as ever, and spot on about re-naming the theatre) I had expected it to be the worst thing I’d ever seen on the London stage. Well, it wasn’t. (That honour goes to the late Nicholas Maw’s Sophie’s Choice at The Opera House) And, to be honest, it wasn’t even the worst musical by John Robinson (as anyone who saw Behind the Iron Mask would surely agree). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it was any good, it just wasn’t as bad as everyone’s been saying. Where to start? Well… this was a book musical. However, it felt like they’d just taken a play and shoe-horned in the songs. Without the songs, and with a bit of re-writing it would probably work as a play. The songs did not, on the whole, add anything to the evening. They were just … there. This might not have been a problem had they not, on the whole, been lumbered with the most ponderous and un-lyrical of lyrics. From memory there were maybe three songs – at least that’s how it seemed – that had any form or rhyming pattern, or lyrical development. The rest were prose set to music. Fine for an opera, or for the occasional song, but we’re talking 23 songs here (YES 23!) in total, though granted some of them were mercifully short. With decent lyrics some of the songs might just have worked. There was nothing that was truly offensive, just nothing that stood out as being, well, worthy of being in a musical on a West End Stage. The thing that I found really hard to fathom was why, given a cast of four, we only ever got solo’s or (twice), duets. No trio’s or even quartets to liven things up. Truly bizarre, though I suspect you could easily have put any four of the songs from the show together at random, with a voice to each part, and the result wouldn’t have seemed out of place. There is one ‘BIG TUNE’, and it’s used all over the place. And very good it is too. So good Kurt Weill’s used it in Lady In The Dark (My Ship Has Sails..). Apart from that, well nothing to add about the music, except that contrary to most of the critics, I thought most of the orchestrations actually rather good. Of the four members of the cast, let’s be honest and up-front and say James Graeme is miscast as Hemingway, and leave it at that. Ditto Tammy Joelle as Louella, the secretary. However, Helen Dallimore as Hemingway’s wife, and Christopher Howell as Rex, the old friend from Hollywood very nearly made the evening enjoyable. Sadly, a show with only half a cast isn’t really a very good show. In other areas the set was awful, the lighting was ok, but a bit obtrusive, the sound was unobtrusive, which I guess means OK, and the band were… well, evidently doing it out of contractual obligation, but everyone has to pay the rent. If there’s one thing that this show teaches, however, it’s that even a musical with only four in the cast needs a choreographer. I can’t believe that any choreographer worth their salt would have let the director get away with the unfocused meanderings that passed for ‘movement’ on the stage tonight, and no matter where the money came from – and this seems to have been another self funded project – the buck must rest with the producer for not keeping the director in check. I thought the whole idea wasn’t a bad one – the Hemingway story etc – though as Ernesto’s last 48 hours seem to have been markedly more interesting than this show would have us believe, I wonder, well, what was the point of it all? So to sum up, Mr Robinson, 10 out of 10 for effort, but probably 2 out of ten for achievement. There are plenty of young talented composers out there with great shows. Become a producer, and showcase their work, or write for someone else and let them produce, but please, next time you have a great idea for a West End show, lie down in a darkened room until it passes… It will save you a shed load of money on the long run. NOTE: My partner has asked me to add that, just as at the end of the tedious mess that was Sophie’s Choice we were left willing the Nazi’s to take everybody so that we could all go home (the opera ran past 11 O’clock) in Too Close To the Sun Hemingway should by rights have saved the audience from more bum-numbing inaction by topping himself a good half dozen songs before he actually did. Harsh, but possibly fair… ...

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