Lightning has struck twice for Michel Hazanavicius’s irresistible 2011 homage to Hollywood silent cinema. The Oscar winner is now reframed as an effervescent and delightfully inventive stage show, which anticipates a longer life after a short run in Plymouth. Directed, choreographed and co-adapted by Drew McOnie, it retains the old-school charm and wit but goes beyond a retread, makes unexpected additions and more emphatically celebrates the transition to the talkies.
McOnie combines theatre and prerecorded film throughout a production that unfolds within set designer Christopher Oram’s glowing art deco proscenium arch and has a superbly integrated video design by Ash J Woodward. As in Hazanavicius’s near-wordless original, the narrative is driven through title cards, almost constant music (newly composed by Simon Hale, with standards from the era), distinctive Variety-style headlines and expressive physical gesture.
