Theatre review: Amélie

My final theatre trip of 2019 isn't explicitly a Christmas show - in fact it very specifically takes place in the late summer and early autumn of 1997 - but it certainly feels seasonally magical and warm-hearted. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 2001 film Amélie was an international hit, which got away with its wilfully naïve nature with a genuinely warm and distinct brand of eccentricity. The word here is whimsy, and regular readers will both know that means I'll go into Craig Lucas (book,) Daniel Messé (music and lyrics) and Nathan Tysen's (lyrics) musical adaptation with a great deal of apprehension. Not because I don't necessarily like whimsy, but because in my experience it's incredibly hard to pull off without overdoing it. In fact, thanks to The Other Palace leaving the audience crushed in the foyer with no explanation, only opening the doors at the time the show was meant to start, and therefore inevitably starting late, Amélie had it all to do to get me on side; but it soon did with apparent effortlessness.

The already doll-like Audrey Brisson gets a huge pair of glasses for the full kawaii effect as Amélie, raised by parents who were both emotionally distant in different ways, and growing up longing for human connection without really knowing how to achieve it.

She moves to an attic flat in Montmartre, where she observes people from her window and from her job waitressing at a café, until she discovers a box hidden under the floorboards – the childhood treasures of a past occupant of her room. She gives herself the mission of reuniting the box with its owner, and when that’s a success promises to continue making little gestures like that to brighten people’s lives up. So she helps a café regular find closure about the dead husband who cheated on her, gets a mean-spirited grocer to stop abusing his assistant, and helps two lonely people find each other (a bit of a dubious “good deed,” this one, given the man’s stalkerish tendencies.) But the trickiest kindness to pull off is returning a lost photo album to its owner.

Nino (Chris Jared) is another eccentric, who visits every photo booth on the Paris Métro, collecting photos that people have torn up and discarded for some reason; his album contains numerous photos of a man he calls “the Phantom” (Oliver Grant,) and when Amélie finds it she starts imagining stories of why he keeps photographing himself then throwing them away. But having briefly met Nino before, she’s too shy to take the book back to him as they were instantly attracted to each other and she’s afraid of disappointment. Brisson’s wide-eyed and earnest performance is a huge part of the evening’s success – she’s hard to take your eyes off, but she’s by no means all that Michael Fentiman’s actor-musician production has going for it.

I saw, and liked, the film when it came out, which would mean it’s been 18 years so I can’t swear to what’s the same and what’s changed, but the musical feels like it’s stuck closely to the spirit and most of the plot, while expanding and changing some areas – I remember Amélie stealing a garden gnome and sending it around the world, but I don’t think it was originally the repository for her mother’s ashes. The fact that the story takes place at the time that Princess Diana died is on the one hand a plot point – the fact that someone she saw as a force for good died in her city is part of what spurs Amélie on to her good deeds, to help replace her positive influence – and something that leads to some of the more surreal moments, as the first-act closer sees her imagine Diana’s funeral as her own, with Elton John (Caolan McCarthy) serenading her. It’s part of an affably bonkers side (like the scene set in a sex shop, with a double-ended dildo getting enthusiastically polished) that balances out the sweetness and stops it from being cloying. (As in the film, the resolution of the “Phantom” storyline shows that an utterly banal explanation can be more satisfying than fantasy.)

Madeleine Girling’s set design takes its theme from the Métro stations where much of the action takes place, all green girders and an imposing clock behind which hides Amélie’s little flat; the device for getting her in and out of there is one of the most charming touches of the production. A multitalented (albeit all-white) cast crowd the small stage and bring to life an almost through-sung show whose music at first seems pleasant but functional; like so much else about the show it’s a grower, and the songs really start to coalesce into toe-tapping numbers that you want to hear again. I was hoping for the best but braced for this to tip over into twee, and these things are so subjective I can’t say there won’t be a lot of people who think it does; I was charmed beyond my expectations. As I get ready for my end-of-year review, I suspect this is going to be one of the most hotly-contested Top Tens I’ve done; could the last show of the year have added itself to contention?

Amélie by Craig Lucas, Daniel Messé and Nathan Tysen, based on the film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant, is booking until the 1st of February at The Other Palace.

Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.