When Once opened on Broadway in 2012, later to enjoy a run in London’s West End, it was greeted with a degree of surprise. You can see why. In terms of the Great White Way, it is an anti-musical.
Based on the 2007 film by John Carney, with a book by Enda Walsh and songs by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, it is unusual not just in being given a stripped-down production by John Tiffany on a barroom set by Bob Crowley that is all scuffed mirrors, wooden panelling and gloomy corners. And not just in its folksy atmosphere, with its preshow singalong and an ensemble of actor-musicians who muck in without fanfare.
But unusual also in fielding such a maudlin set of songs and a depressive story, written on the wind, that defies razzmatazz. More than once it threatens to erupt into a rousing showstopper and more than once it resists. Even the movement sequences by Steven Hoggett owe everything to the angularity of physical theatre and nothing to the high-kicking spirit of A Chorus Line. It is the most reluctant of musicals. [READ MORE]