The Woman in White – REVIEW

The Woman in White

Charing Cross Theatre, London

 

Seen on December 14th, 2017

Reviewed by Jade Prince

★★★★

Another love story focusing on betrayal and greed and a secret that needs revealing. This eerily beautiful musical follows Walter Hartwright (Ashley Stillburn) as he endeavours to find out this mysterious secret after a strange encounter with the ‘woman in white’ on his travels. A simple work trip to become an in-house drawing master to half-sisters Laura Fairlie (Anna O’Bryne) and Marian Halcombe (Carolyn Maitland) turns into something more chilling.

Right off the bat this show was pretty slow to start with but thankfully the pace picked up halfway through act 1. I went into this show not knowing anything of the story. This is a Webber musical/Charlotte Jones book I have never delved into. At the interval I felt that it was very predictable both lyrically and with the story. Having seen the complete show now I still stand by what I said about the predictability of the lyrics but the story took a lovely turn.

It took a while for the show to captivate me however once it did it was beautiful. I have to be truly honest, the majority of the music didn’t do much for me. A small portion of the numbers were very nice especially when the three voices of Carolyn Maitland, Anna O’Bryne and Sophie Reeves (Anne Catherick) came together. Their voices alone were stunning.

The set was really nice and I loved the way the woman in white could just appear in the middle of the stage. This added even more to the uncertainty and chilling feel. For those who were not familiar with the story (me!) it raised the question, “is she really a ghost?”. Something my attention was drawn to (now this is me being very nit-picky) was the way the costumes were lacking in detail. For the time period they seemed very drab.

The whole cast were very strong regardless of age. The standout performer had to be Sophie Reeves (Anne Catherick). Her performance was stunning and she fit the character to a T. Vocally and visually she was mesmerising.

Overall, I did enjoy the show and I highly recommend it. The Woman in White has a very limited run at Charing Cross Theatre so be sure to grab tickets sooner rather than later! More information and tickets can be found at: http://thewomaninwhite.co.uk/ 

The show is booking until February 10th, 2018.