The Third Man (Susan Elkin reviews)

I have never seen Carol Reed’s famous 1947 film. You might reasonably ask where I’ve been hiding for the last 70 years or so but there it is. The advantage for me of that hole in my cultural education is that in seeing this new musical version now is that I was probably the only person in the audience who had no idea where the narrative was going – although I rather suspected from the beginning that Harry Lime isn’t dead at all perhaps because of some vague memory of seeing, years ago, the film of Funeral in Berlin which does a similar thing with the wrong man in the coffin. So I was arrested by the plot – just I would be with, say, a new crime drama on TV.

There’s a lot to like about both the show and the production. For example it pounds along for ages like a straight play into which Fenton’s delightful music is subtly woven. Sometimes it starts so imperceptibly that you don’t immediately notice the seamless change. Because Anna (Natalie Dunne – good) works in a night club she gets a couple of sparky numbers including a witty song about getting a second opinion – aka as sleeping with more than one man  – which I bet will soon be getting performed as a standalone. It’s fun too that when we get the final, fatal confrontation between the two men, they are fervently singing a two person round.  The eight piece band which accompanies it all is out of sight on a platform doing a fine job under Tamara Saringer’s direction.

Also striking is the direction (Trevor Nunn) and the use of the space. Configured with a big square playing area, entrance points on all four corners and audience on three sides, it allows the cast of eighteen to move around a lot. Thus we get beggars on the streets of Vienna, chases, the British Officer’s bar, Anna’s home and dressing room and eventually – very evocatively – the  climactic sewers. It feels spacious, expansive and large scale although Menier Chocolate Factory is, in reality, a small theatre.

Sam Underwood delights as Holly Martin, the American who has arrived in Vienna in search of his school friend Harry. He is suitably tentative, gradually becoming determined to dig out the truth and eventually devastated when he learns it.  His love overture to Anna feels as if it’s abruptly come from nowhere but Underwood somehow carries it off.

There are also fine performances from the support cast including Derek Griffiths as the concierge at Harry’s block of flats and  Edward Baker-Duly as the crisp, very British Major Calloway dishing out gin, advice and information.  The ensemble is terrific too especially in a very effective dream sequence in which physical theatre and imaginative direction conveys all the agony of Holly Martins who is in bed.

I think I might now watch the film to see what I’ve been missing.