It sounds lovely doesn't it, a theatre trip on Valentines Day to see 'A French romance that happens to be sung' this was the trip i was most looking forward too after hearing such high prasie of Knee High's incredible physical theatre & story telling style. Well how shocked I was, based on the french film of the same name the play stayed close to the original 1960's plot of love & loss, a theme which has now been done to death over every art medium. So this for me was the first sticking point, it was predictable, dull, and seemed very shallow. Secondly, the play was stuck in a difficult territory between Opera & Musical all dialogue was sung & I must admit in the orignal all French version this was beautiful. But when traslated into English, it was wearing to say the least....I found myself begging actors to stop singing & just speak thier lines naturally. For me translating the dialogue is what ultimately let this play down and as Knee High are known for thier story telling ablilities I feel the story would have transcended through this languague barrier. Many of the characters seemed shallow and stereotyped and it was difficult to form any kind of feeling or empathy for them, I merely found myself destesting each character more and more with every passing minute.
As a good point for Knee High they added in a Caberet style character called Lola, who sang the only French spoken song in the show, whom interacted with the audience providing light relief from the otherwise draining show.
Worryingly for Knee High (a small Cornish company) they are taking this show to, more or less the West End in London, it would be a shame for a small company to get terrible reviews for thier first big show but, I feel this might happen.
Here is a clip from the film, which is much more watchable than the Knee High Production.
& a review of the show by annother theatre goer that I found online
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