Gil Hates Everything

(its official title appears to use the digit… not sure I like that)

Sometimes you just cringe, don’t you? You hear of an adaptation from one form to another of something you like, and you think “Oh god, please, no”, or sometimes you advance straight to “Just don’t fuck it up”, or you can’t stand the pressure and you avoid it at all costs. Often this is because you love the original so much, and you might like to experience it in another medium, and you insist that you know how it should be done, but if pressed… nope, no details come to mind… you’ll just know whether it’s done right or wrong.

Well, happily, this adaptation of old but still fun novel “The Three Musketeers” does it right, and meshes exactly with the mental machine I had built to evaluate whether or not it would satisfy me. The book is typically immense, but the core of the plot is pretty simple, and it’s been repeatedly adapted as a movie with satisfying results… but you know musical-writers, they can get anything wrong for the sake of pursuing a cute tune or a crowd-pleasing knees-up. But not here: this sounds like exactly the musical of the book that you’d want, and furthermore, its evolution predates “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, which was a work of moderate genius and can’t fail to inform anyone’s thoughts when tackling a swashbuckler, so it has its own sound.

It’s by George Stiles and Paul Leigh – Stiles is the composer of a whole bunch of shows including “Honk!”, but he appears to manage his own distribution and rights, which is probably why you’ve never heard of it.

Other facts I can tell you: the lyrics are adequate-to-good, and funny where necessary; the mood shifts nicely from chirpy banter and romance to shady street scenes and intrigues; both leading women are sopranos (making their duet a bit of a deafener); there’s a good love duet called “Shadows”; and the musketeers continually banter in songs like “It’s A Funny Thing Being A Hero” and “Life Of A Musketeer”. And the music is impressive, well-arranged, and gives Frank Wildhorn a run for his money (I mean that in a nice way).

The score works well immersively but now I’m standing back and looking at it I can admit it’s by no means perfect. But it’s certainly fit-for-purpose; I didn’t get bored. The main thing is the tone and the light touch, and the blessed relief of it not being done Leslie Bricusse-style.

This isn’t a life-changing show or the best musical ever, but it’s a perfectly good Three Musketeers musical which not only doesn’t fuck up its opportunities but confidently tackles them head-on, and I totally recommend listening to it, and would be off to see it in a flash if it was ever produced around here. I also feel a bit bad now about passing on “Honk!” when it was on, since these people clearly know what they’re doing.

Random Panda awards “The 3 Musketeers” eight out of ten pieces of bamboo.

(originally published in 2010)