By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN?: Saturday 13 July 2024 (matinee), opens 17 July and booking until 14 September 2024 RUNTIME: 140 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

Stephen Schwartz wrote the music and lyrics for this forgotten gem and is better known for a musical that has starred his leading lady here (Wicked, Apollo Victoria Theatre) and opens in its celluloid version on 22 November 2024.

• Read on for reasons including how we knead to see The Baker’s Wife in a larger venue on its West End transfer

This is a story set in a provincial French village in the 1930’s which has been without a baker for a while and celebrates the arrival of a new 1 observing how much older the jolly middle-aged chap is than his wife.

The original 1976 production starred Patti Lupone (Company, Gielgud Theatre) but never made it to Broadway. It enjoyed much greater acclaim in a 1989 West End production staged by Trevor Nunn (Love In Idleness, Menier) who put it on after hearing the show’s stand-out track Meadowlark so often in auditions.

Schwartz is interviewed in the programme and pays tribute to Nunn: ‘Trevor solved the show for us. Originally, Joe and I didn’t get the balance right between the central story and the villagers … Trevor said the village is the protagonist. Along with the central characters, it’s the village which undergoes the great change – and that’s the real story.’

Jones’ baker’s wife Genevieve is wooed by the Marquis’ charming and infatuated chauffeur Joaquin Pedro Valdes (Pacific Overtures, Menier) and it’s during the show’s most moving number, the previously mentioned Meadowlark, where she contemplates what to do.

Director Gordon Greenberg (Barnum, Menier Chocolate Factory) gives us a re-imagined Menier with cabaret seating where some of the cast join the audience and more familiar banks of benches on either side of the venue.

It succeeds in drawing the audience into the town square and making those watching feel a very much part of the village which is, in part, driving the action.

Jones brings a beautiful clarity to both Meadowlark and song Warmth where she contemplates the fire of her younger suitor but misses the warmth of the home she has created with the baker.

Elsewhere Rowe (Blues In The Night, Kiln Theatre) makes for a kindly baker and he’s in fine singing voice throughout the show including an early bakery scene with his wife for Merci Madame.

This show is cast beautifully and the women have real agency with Josefina Gabriella’s waitress Denise giving us a welcoming opening number, Serenade, and shedding light on her relationship where she is rather being taken for granted.

Finty Williams’ intense Hortense is subjected to controlling behaviour by her husband Barnaby played by an infuriating Liam Tamne and resolves to do something about it.

David Seadon Young’s often drunken Antoine and Matthew Seadon-Young’s unsympathetic Priest give us a villagers’ perspective on what we are seeing.

Schwartz hopes to bring The Baker’s Wife to a slightly larger venue and, on this evidence, it is so well performed that we knead to see it next on its West End transfer.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Menier Chocolate Factory Tickets
• Have you seen a Lucie Jones show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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