“Humbug” at this time of year usually means Scrooge. Barnum gives the word an altogether different twist. In this 1980 musical, “humbug” is legerdemain, entrepreneurial flair, salesman’s hype, the dazzle that puts stars in your eyes. Phineas Taylor Barnum, peddler of the American dream, bravura creator of spectacle (just look at his elephants sashaying through Victorian Chesterfield), was not only a showman and hustler but a politician. He might have lived in the 19th century but his life and circus could equally belong to 2017.
Not in Gordon Greenberg’s staging, the show’s first major London revival since the 1981 production starring Michael Crawford. Mark Bramble’s script is thin. Episodes of Barnum’s life – bickering lovingly with his puritan wife (all principle and devotion), hearing his museum has burned down, having a romance with “the Swedish nightingale” Jenny Lind, trying to sell us a mermaid – are plonked undramatically down, one after another. Cy Coleman’s music – lots of brass oompah – and Michael Stewart’s merry but undistinguished lyrics are entertaining but not strong enough to make the story vivid.
The show needs a trump card. Marcus Brigstocke, who plays Barnum, is not that card. As a quick-on-the-draw comedy performer he can do what many actors cannot: chat easily to the audience, beckoning them in or (in the case of a few challenges to critics) giving them the willies by picking some of them out and demanding they play the kazoo. It is, if anything, a plus that when he sets off to walk the tightrope you don’t know if he is wobbling in earnest or just teasing. That high wire on which he totters stretches from one lover to another: everyone falls off it from time to time.
But wobble is not a force. Brigstocke, whose singing voice is not strong, sounds pallid beside Laura Pitt-Pulford, who as the goody-goody wifey soars with her lovely, knife-like voice. He also looks puny – and who wouldn’t? – alongside the acrobats, who are the real stars of the show.
Paul Farnsworth’s design turns the tiny Menier into a big top. Rebecca Howell’s choreography and Scott Maidment’s “circus direction” encircle it in a whirligig of activity. Gorgeously. Girls in frilled corsets cartwheel and balance one-handed on their companion’s head. People eat fire, juggle with knives, jump through hoops, skim up poles, balance on enormous balloons.
As Tom Thumb, Harry Francis pirouettes and leaps beautifully around the ring. As Jenny Lind, Celinde Schoenmaker beautifully belts out her numbers. Very impressive and jolly all this – the more so for being seen so close up – but these exuberant skills aren’t enough to disguise the weakness at the centre. Not so much humbug as Polo.
• Barnum is at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, until 3 March 2018
