There is opera by Bellini, Handel and Mozart to come, but this year’s Buxton international festival opened with the premiere of a musical. The Land of Might-Have-Been weaves the romantic 1930s melodies of Ivor Novello into the pacifist autobiographical writing of Vera Brittain, who grew up in Buxton. At first sight it’s not an obvious pairing, though Novello and Brittain were exact contemporaries. Yet it works surprisingly well.
Novello composed the patriotic anthem Keep the Home Fires Burning in 1914, but the world’s troubles cast no discernible shadow over the hit musicals he wrote in the 1930s and 40s. One of the many achievements of Michael Williams in knitting Novello’s sentimental songs so tightly into a narrative drawn from Brittain’s morally charged memoir Testament of Youth is that the music and the words enhance one another so effectively. On their own, each would be an interesting curiosity. Together, they draw things out from each other, conjuring an effective piece of musical theatre.
It helps that Williams, who is also the Buxton festival’s CEO, has the confidence to give himself creative licence. His book is structured around two doomed wartime romances. The first, between the feminist Brittain and her soldier poet fiance Roland Leighton, really happened. The second, between Vera’s gay brother Edward, who was killed in 1918, and his schoolfriend Bobby, who dies in the trenches, is largely invented. But the narrative is convincing and avoids the temptation to make the relationships too 21st century. A framing introduction and epilogue set in 1944 work less well.
The show’s success, though, really rests on Novello. There are some irresistible high tempo dance numbers as well as the more familiar sentimental solos and duets, and Williams cleverly holds back the most famous of these, We’ll Gather Lilacs, until the very end. Iain Farrington’s arrangements for the 16-piece orchestra conducted by Iwan Davies are idiomatically done, and get rid of Novello’s penchant for soupy orchestration. But the quality of Novello’s tunes rarely falters; they are the key to preventing the evening from becoming too worthy or preachy.
It isn’t hard to imagine the show being produced more lavishly. But it is difficult to imagine it being done with more commitment and integrity than in the deftness of Kimberley Sykes’s focused direction, to which Michela Meazza’s well-produced choreography lends charm and style. Sykes manages the transition from the airy optimism of the early scenes to the much darker second half with great skill.
Among the principals, the irrepressibly personable Audrey Brisson holds things together as Vera, though her soprano is sometimes shrill. Among the men, Alexander Knox as Roland and George Arvidson as Edward are all well characterised but the excellent Kit Esuruoso stands out as Bobby.
• In Buxton until 21 July, then at the Norwich theatre from 25 to 30 July.
