What makes a cult musical? For fans, is it the longing to restore a misunderstood work by a favourite composer to its rightful place in their canon? For a director, is it the desire to achieve a ‘By George, she’s got it’ moment where others have failed? At the very least, one would expect it to have something really startling about it. While Michael Strassen’s staging is perfectly charming, I’m bemused as to why The Baker’s Wife inspires such devotion with its lack of anything special. It’s obvious why Stephen Schwartz’s 1976 musical based on Marcel Pagnol’s film never made it to Broadway and flopped in the West End – above all, it has a hopeless book by Joseph Stein (most renowned for his work on Fiddler on the Roof) that’s devoid of character development, making every role a thankless one.
We know that we’re in France because we’re told so by the narrator, café proprietress and abused wife Denise (Ricky Butt), but the time period is uncertain: the costumes are vaguely 1930s-style, but it could just as easily be set in medieval Martin Guerre territory as a brief reference to a bus is the only concession to the twentieth century. The wall is covered with a striking chalk mural (by Robyn Wilson-Owen) featuring haunted Munch-esque female figures, indicating a dark sense of sexual mania that never transpires on stage. There’s nothing authentically Gallic about Schwartz’s music, but it’s lively enough and he deserves credit for rhyming ‘listless’ with ‘kissed less.’
The chattering, bread-deprived inhabitants of an isolated rural village are excited about the arrival of a new baker, Aimable, who turns up newly married to a beautiful young wife, Genevieve, who agreed to marry him when an affair with a married man ended. Aimable’s baking is a huge hit (with hints of suggestive baguette action), as is the virtuous Genevieve with the male residents. Initially resisting the local Marquis’s hunky manservant Dominique’s attentions, she submits and the pair plan to elope to Paris. In the meantime, her teetotal husband gets drunk and the villagers gossip some more. After a night of passion in a barn with her lover, she discovers that lust and a well-toned torso is no substitute for the warmth of her Baker’s oven, returns home and all is well. Madame Bovary, this is not.
Lisa Stokke is very sweet in the title role (something that’s impossible to imagine Patti LuPone, the original Genevieve, being) but remains on the same dramatic level throughout. Her rendition of the show’s stand-alone song ‘Meadowlark’ doesn’t convey the nervous euphoria of a woman about to embark on an affair with a “beautiful young man.” If the tactless villagers weren’t so obsessed with the age difference, she and the hardly decrepit Michael Matus wouldn’t seem mismatched at all. Matus brings an appealing vulnerability and palpable sense of adoration towards his wife. As the fancy man, Matthew Goodgame, who was a dead ringer for Clark Gable in Chichester Festival Theatre’s enchanting production of She Loves Me, here resembles a young Hugh Jackman, his warm voice and persuasive masculinity setting several audience members’ hearts aflutter.
While The Baker’s Wife itself is fated to be half-baked, Strasssen’s production (he also recently revived Schwartz’s Godspell at the Union) is engagingly staged, enjoyable to watch and captures the Union’s characteristic warmth – the cupcakes and petits fours on press night were a lovely touch.
Written for Exeunt
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