Thelma & Louise musical at the Young Vic – review

You know there’s a problem with a musical when you long for the songs to stop and the dialogue to begin. That’s the case here, where the music provided by singer songwriter Neko Case does absolutely nothing to improve the heroic story of Thelma and Louise, best friends on the run.

Callie Khouri, who wrote the book, also wrote the screenplay for Ridley Scott’s swaggering 1991 film. She’s longed to turn her tale into a musical for years. Yet bringing it to the stage falls flat. The best jokes, the smartest lines, and the power of this feminist parable all come direct from the movie, that made stars of Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis and a very young Brad Pitt.  

Their stage incarnations are excellent. Rachel Tucker as tough-talking Louise and Amy Lennox as the ditsy Thelma are entirely convincing and committed as two women who end up wanted in three states after a vacation from their lives and their neglectful partners goes horribly wrong. They sing powerfully and create an appealing rapport, even (in one of director Trip Cullman’s more baffling choices) when forced to sing direct into the audience with microphones. Jordan Luke Gage has a cheeky, enlivening cameo as JD, the drifter they encounter en route.

But so much around them varies between uninspired and positively clunky. The script, for example, choses to underline the moral of the story in unnecessary ways; Trevor Dion Nicholas brings feeling to the story in his portrayal of the sympathetic cop Hal, but the scenes when his wife Sarah (Letitia Hector) explains the patriarchy and the dangers faced by women are leaden.

The music is generic rock, the lyrics do little to elevate ideas and are tiresomely repetitive. Some songs are lively, but none are memorable. There is a rich and varied band playing, and just occasionally when a country twang enters the score, there’s a sense of a what the writing could have been, but then it gets flattened by the latest heavy rock riff powering along the blacktop.  

Cullman has made the bold choice to stage the entire show in a slightly grim, brown bar (designed by Christine Jones and Brett J Banakis) that only once opens up – to reveal a surprisingly crudely painted scene of the Grand Canyon at the story’s climax. This has the virtue of simplicity, but does mean that for a story of adventure, set on the road, there is no movement.

As if sensing this, the ensemble occasionally fills the space with movement which is only occasionally justified. There’s some effective line dancing (choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber) but rather more pointless background activity which distracts from the emotional core of the story. Rather better is the decision to dispense with the iconic Thunderbird in which the women are travelling and to create an impression of the road by Natasha Chivers’ lighting which sweeps around the set, creating an impression of lines on the tarmac and dazzling headlights.

But it all feels meagre, slow-paced, stripped of excitement and crucially of that sense of liberation which powers the narrative even as it dips towards its inevitable close. Lennox and Tucker sing their hearts out, but it’s not enough.