Marie Curie, Book & Lyrics by Seeun Choun. Music by Jongyoon Choi. Charing Cross Theatre, Villiers Street, London WEC2 to 28 July 2024.

2✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“A musical to boggle the mind.”

The prospect of a musical life of Marie Curie was a mind boggling prospect and once unloaded on to the London stage this show from South Korea duly boggled the mind. On the plus side it is very well sung by Ailsa Davidson, lumbered with the thankless role of Marie, and Chrissie Bhima as Anne, her fellow Pole and best friend. They really are something special. The men in their lives – Thomas Josling as Pierre Curie and Richard Meek as the industrialist who markets radium – are also well sung although why Mr Meek is forced into a suit clearly designed for someone smaller – his trousers reach barely below his kneecaps is something only Rose Montgomery, the costume designer,eoul can explain. As for Marie, in real life she may have worn only black but black in front of a mostly black set does not make for eye catching spectacle on stage. The visual interest, such as it is, is provided by lots of projections of impossible to read accounts of Marie’s researches and calculations in algebra as she discovers radium and earns her first Nobel prize. In the list of truly awful musicals to land in the West End this import from the East directed by Sarah Meadows is a contender for a place very near the top. The English lyrics are by Emma Fraser as are the musical arrangements for this production – all may have been better when it was staged in Seoul in 2020. One will never know. The cast work very hard although one does feel a little short changed when the male students at the Sorbonne, being dismissive of the first woman to be in their class, turn out to be sung and danced by mostly women admittedly wearing trousers. The set lumbers about to change the scene from laboratory to factory where the workers are being poisoned by radium to little effect, while the score, easy enough on the eart goes in one and out the other. One feels for the cast as it ploughs on regardless. However there are Ailsa Davidson – she has a fine soprano voice – and Chrissie Bhima – who has a voice and an engaging stage presence – on offer and the reason for the two stars. Without them it would have been a close run thing to awarding none. Maybe the makers should have done, as so many makers of musicals do, had a look at the movie and based the show on the Greer Garson/ Walter Pigeon film because this account of Marie’s life fails to present her as someone one roots for and you need to do that in a musical. Even Rose, who was not loveable, got her turn. It is played straight through,m possibly wise as were there an interval the house would almost certainly prove thinner come the second half.

Cast

Ailsa Davidson – Marie Sklodowska Curie.

Chrissie Bhima – Anne Kowalska.

Thomas Josling – Pierre Curie.

Richard Meek – Ruben DeLong.

Lucy Young – Irene Curie,

Dean Makowski-Clayton – Maarcin/Dr Chagall.

Maya Kristal Tenebaum – Emilia.

Isabel Snaas – Janka.

Christopher Killik – Lech, Deab & Hospital Director.

Yujin Park – Pawel.

Rio Maye -On-stage Swing.

Creatives

Director – Sarah Meadows.

Musical Director – Emma Fraser.

Choreographer – Joanna Goodwin.

Set & Costume Designer – Rose Montgomery.

Lighting Designer – Prema Mehta.

Sound Designer – Andrew Johnson.

Projection Designer – Matt Powell.