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The Witches of Eastwick

Edinburgh Playhouse
3 stars
Bob Rafelson’s archly-cast big-screen adaptation of John Updike’s 1984 novel about how the Devil made three small-town ladies do it to death is a recognisable pre-cursor to the last decade’s wave of supernatural-based comic-book TV. Nikolai Foster’s big bucks revival of John Dempsey and Dana P. Rowe’s musical version confirms this, as Marti Pellow’s motor-mouthed sex addict Daryl Van Horne unlocks Pandora’s Box for an already unholy trinity of singletons. As musically frigid Jane, tongue-tied and bookish Sukie and artily swaddled Alex overcome their fear of flying, one is reminded of the musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer filtered through Desperate Housewives by way of Charmed.

All of which makes for a pretty snappy show, even if it’s initial narrative thrust, which suggests that it takes a bad boy to liberate a gal’s sexuality, doesn’t exactly move feminism forward. Even so, there’s a definite dark side to proceedings, even as Dempsey and Rowe’s well turned out numbers pay their dues to the great American song-book before putting what often sound like bubblegum girl group routines in great big inverted commas. This is helped along no end by Pellow, whose vocal tics when speaking often resemble Tim Curry’s turn as Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, while his fast-forward physical technique owes more to peachy-keen enthusiasm than soft-shoe choreography.

Elsewhere, Ria Jones, Rebecca Thornhill and Poppy Tierney cast a sassy, sexy spell as sisters doing it for themselves, while the teen romance sub-plot is a syrupy affirmation that true love, if you get in quick enough, conquers all. Only, one suspects, when Hell freezes over, that is.

The Herald, December 15th 2008

ends

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