Martin Guerre at the Old Vic: Rehashed musical is still over-wrought

Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Someone should tell composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and his co-author and prime lyricist Alain Boublil.

The French duo has spent three decades, with many different creative teams, trying to reshape their 1996 pudding Martin Guerre into something that will stand comparison with their operatic juggernauts Les Miserables and Miss Saigon.

The historic story of a 16th century French peasant who returns to his wife after years away but is then suspected of being an imposter has inspired many fictional retellings, including three musicals. The Schönberg/Boublil version won an Olivier Award in 1997 despite being constantly rehashed during its original run. It’s been revised and rewritten several times since.

The latest iteration is a pared down, 95-minute, in-the-round staging developed and directed by Matthew Warchus. It’s been squeezed in before his annual Christmas Carol, towards the tail end of his 11 estimable years in charge of the Old Vic.

It’s certainly not ponderous, as I vaguely remember the troubled, stop-start 1996 West End premiere to have been. Indeed, it plays out like a pacy, screamy folk-horror, but one that takes itself far too seriously. Everyone wears black, and French rusticity is implied by northern English accents.

Here, characters are forever heaving their hearts into their throats and yowling about God, witchcraft, love or jealousy at their interlocutors or the audience. There’s some fine singing from the mostly young cast, particularly Liv Andrusier as Martin’s abandoned and then apparently, zestfully re-embraced wife Bertrande. But “overwrought” doesn’t begin to describe it.

Shane O'Riordan (Martin) and Liv Andrusier (Bertrande) in Martin Guerre at The Old Vic 2026

Helen Maybanks

The largely through-sung score is driven by plangent strings, with a recurring upstart penny whistle and what I think is a wistful harmonium. Phrases flower, fade and recur as scenes sprint forward.

Some of the set numbers are very fine, particularly Someday and Live With Somebody You Love. But too many feel like sketchy placeholders, there to move the story on. New songs have been written, some old ones possibly renamed, and three English-speaking lyricists are credited. The list of musical numbers bears very little resemblance to that of any previous version.

Though simple, the plot weaves together big themes. The teenage marriage of Martin and Bertrande is supposed to cement the prosperity of their farming families but their childlessness coincides with a punishing drought. Witchcraft is presumed. Martin runs off to war to become a man: Bertrande is left to endure her accusing neighbours and her rejected suitor Guillaume (Barney Wilkinson).

Seven years later Martin (Shane O’Riordan) reappears and bingo! Bertrande gives birth, the rain comes, and everyone is happy. Until doubt arises. Looming over it all is the question of whether any of us can truly know another.

Unfortunately, everything here is a bit too obvious or on-the-nose, from the Traitors cloaks and chalk-smeared faces of the beginning to the flag-waving war flashbacks and the deployment of village idiot Benoit (Colin Ryan) and his doll-bride Louison for light relief.

Warchus’s direction, and Rob Howell’s basic design of a circle of benches strewn with red chaff, are succinct and effective. The lighting and the band are crisp. But my god it’s over the top. Everyone here sings with a tremulous, volcanic passion, but on the bus home I realised I was humming the signature number “Martin Guerre” to the “Go Compare” ad jingle.

Critics have been asked not to reveal the ending, which is okay, as there isn’t one at the moment, just a series of false climaxes then a slow withdrawal from the stage. Perhaps the story is itself the problem: the very mystery that makes the real-life tale of Martin Guerre so tantalising doesn’t lend itself to an easily resolved narrative. Oh well., Back to the drawing board.