Too Close to the Sun
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”.
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 for a Christmas cracker firm.
Less professional witticisms emanate from Ernie’s fourth wife Mary who says bitchily, but incomprehensibly, of her possible rival, the pushy personal assistant Louella, that she has to take off her brassiere to count to twelve. I’m still trying to work that one out.
This is a musical that’s best (ie, not quite so bad) when nobody sings. The music is a chewy cardboard devoid of taste, style or melody – apart from that, I suppose it’s alright – although it’s made to sound better in the arrangements of Conor Mitchell.
“Style gives you character, character gives you the man,” sings Helen Dallimore as Mary in a crinkly wig (wasn’t she wonderful, though as Glinda the good witch in Wicked?), again, incomprehensibly.
James Graeme as Ernest looks like a lookalike in a lookalike competition. Tammy Joelle simpers irritatingly as Louella and Christopher Howell (replacing the wisely departed Jay Benedict) blusters noisily about as though nothing is wrong.
But everything’s wrong on Christopher Woods’ cheap-looking slatted ranch set. Director Pat Garrett should cut the show in half before audiences start shouting at old beardie to kill himself before the interval. After it, he merely demonstrates the impotence of being Ernest.
