Review: Thelma and Louise, Young Vic ★★½

The iconic ending of the 1991 Thelma and Louise film is one that stays forever in the mind: a tiny, blue car flying out across the Grand Canyon, frozen in a final moment of defiance and togetherness. It is at a soaring scale, with the magnificence of the canyon behind but also intimate, we have time to see the two women hold hands and watch the tears roll down their cheeks. Crucially, it was an ending changed after initial test audiences hated seeing the car crashed at the bottom of the canyon. So it is perhaps surprising that the only glimpse we see of a car in the Thelma and Louise musical at the Young Vic, is a crashed one at the very beginning.

While it would be unreasonable to expect a flying car or helicopters in a small-scale musical, the sense of two small women pitted against a man’s world, set in the stunning vastness of the US desert is something that could be translated to stage. This new musical is uneven in its success at translating the charm and cheek of the original film, despite being written by original screenwriter, Callie Khouri.

An initial problem is the set. It is a sharply observed Western bar with extraordinary detail which makes for a fine opening. But it is this exacting detail that makes it harder for it to double as other locations later on. In particular, the scale of Thelma and Louise’s journey (estimated at well over 1,000 miles) is almost completely lost. A night sky scene where stars are illuminated over the set also loses its impact when the original set is still so clearly visible.

Some songs, especially in the second half, successfully convey the emotion of the piece but there are a lot of them and many sound too similar. It is a cowboy-western style vibe, complete with line dancing, which works in places but is not enough to carry a full show. At times, I was willing the song to end so the story could move on.

There is some imaginative staging, with Thelma (Amy Lennox)’s paddling pool piece an energetic and fun way to show her letting loose and leaving behind her housewife boundaries. The attempted rape which leads to the whole journey going off the rails is also painfully drawn.

Rachel Tucker as Louise sensitively portrays the pain of past abuse and we see her grapple with the frustration of having to look after Thelma but also deal with her own troubles. Lennox and Tucker help elevate the show from its limitations. So too do husband Hal (Trevor Dion Nicholas) and wife Sarah (Letitia Hector), their ballad about the future of little girls is one of the more moving in the piece.

When new musicals are produced, there are frequent debates about what should be made into a musical. Perhaps part of the debate should examine what made the piece special in the first place. For Thelma and Louise, too much of the massive scale of the journey is lost. The power of the cast is not enough to elevate the show to equal the film. If the qualities of the film cannot be recreated, then perhaps exceptional music might make the loss worthwhile. But for this musical, I am not convinced that test was passed either