Theatre review: Hex

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: All the remaining run of Hex has been reclassified as previews.

My most-cancelled show of the Christmas season - I had to reschedule it twice - the National Theatre's new musical Hex has missed so much of its planned run that what's left is now being considered a preview, prior to it returning for what they'll be hoping will be a more successful second try at the end of the year. This is probably for the best - I'd hazard a guess that composer Jim Fortune, book writer Tanya Ronder and lyricist/director Rufus Norris will be giving it a few tweaks between now and then. Whether the promising premise can actually be converted into a hit is another story. Hex applies to Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty the central conceits of two of the most popular fairytale musicals of all time: The revisionist take on a character usually seen as the villain, most famously used in Wicked, and the second act exploring what happens after the Happy-Ever-After, as used in Into the Woods.