Dark of the Moon musical at Charing Cross Theatre – review

Dark of the Moon at Charing Cross Theatre desperately wants to be a brooding slice of Appalachian folk horror, all doomed romance and smoky superstition. Instead, it lands somewhere between earnest supernatural melodrama and an especially serious episode of Riverdale with better choreography.

That is not entirely a criticism. There are moments where the production genuinely crackles. Georgie Rankcom’s direction is by far the strongest element of the evening, with stage movement so fluid and sharply constructed that even scenes lacking emotional momentum remain visually compelling.

The lighting design by Jonathan Chan is also exceptional, bathing the stage in eerie purples, shadowy silhouettes and sudden bursts of stark light that do far more heavy lifting than the script itself. At points, the production looks phenomenal. You could mute entire scenes and still understand exactly which emotional atmosphere the creative team are aiming for.

Barbara Allen (played by Lauren Jones) gives the piece its only real emotional anchor. She has genuine star quality: grounded, magnetic, and refreshingly unaffected amidst all the surrounding theatrical fog. Even when the material slips into cliché, she never does. There is a quiet intelligence to her performance that makes you wish the play trusted her more. She’s absolutely one to watch.

The trouble is that almost everyone around her feels trapped inside characters so thinly drawn they barely register beyond their narrative function. Angry patriarchs, judgemental townspeople, tortured young men: the play gestures vaguely towards complexity without ever really earning it. The treatment of the female characters, particularly in relation to the men around them, does at least leave you with something to chew on by the interval, though whether that is intentional depth or accidental frustration is another question entirely.

Musically, the production is frustratingly uneven. Some harmonies soar beautifully, but several key vocal moments veer into strain and noticeable pitchiness, especially during emotionally heightened songs where subtlety is sacrificed for volume. The accents are similarly inconsistent, slipping in and out often enough to become distracting.

Visually, the costumes never quite match the show’s gothic tone. For a story steeped in folklore and mysticism, much of the wardrobe feels oddly contemporary and uninspired, as though half the cast had stopped by Zara on the way to the Smoky Mountains.

And then there’s the pacing. At two and a half hours, Dark of the Moon feels every minute of its runtime. Scenes circle the same emotional beats repeatedly, creating the nagging sense that the story is constantly building towards something it never fully delivers. When the drama finally arrives, it’s effective enough, but the road there is long, uneven and oddly hollow.

There is undoubtedly talent on this stage, and technical feats are often impressive. But despite all the smoke, shadows and strained yearning, Dark of the Moon never quite finds the pulse it’s searching for.