If Aspects of Love is a blast from the past for some of us, it must surely be a nostalgia fest for Michael Ball, who played the musical’s young lover Alex when it premiered in 1989, and found himself propelled into the pop charts with its signature ballad, Love Changes Everything.
It was Ball’s suggestion that this story of Parisian love triangles and romantic family entanglements be revived, with the star now playing Alex’s uncle, George.
With music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black and Charles Hart, there are some strong numbers such as Seeing is Believing. But it is Love Changes Everything that dominates the production, directed by Jonathan Kent, first belted out by Ball and reprised many times over.
It is, without doubt, a well-oiled show, easy on the eye and ear. John Macfarlane’s gliding screens reveal gorgeous sets and the voices are strong across the board. But for all its smoothness, there is a preposterousness to it.
Much of this is down to the story, which begins as love-struck Alex (Jamie Bogyo) meets actor Rose (Laura Pitt-Pulford), several years his senior, and scoops her into a too sudden romance, just as quickly stymied when Uncle George falls for her too. George’s Italian lover, the artist Giulietta (Danielle de Niese), is also thrown into the fray while Rose acquires her own squeeze, Hugo (Vinny Coyle), though he seems more like a butler than a lover. Meanwhile, Giulietta’s kiss with Rose comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere too.
The bohemian passions of David Garnett’s 1955 novella, on which this musical is based, appear more like incestuous wrangles. These include an unsavoury development when the greying Alex falls for his cousin, Jenny (Anna Unwin), who is 18 (three years older than she was in the original musical). This prompts another tussle of love with her father, George, whose disapproval bears hints of sexual jealousy.
In fact, these characters seem far from bohemian, their gender dynamics built on a conventional notion of male sexual jealousy or competition and female need or naivety. Giulietta is the only real bohemian, though her free spirit seems directly channelled from Frida Kahlo.
We get the sense that these people could only ever exist within the bounds of a musical – one that is easy enough to watch but entirely unconvincing in its emotions.
At the Lyric theatre, London, until 11 November
