Impresario Cameron Mackintosh is fond of recalling just how many years (12, I think) it took the writers of Guys and Dolls to fashion the musical we all know and love today.

Perhaps it was this "if at first you don't succeed" ethic which persuaded him to persevere with this third great musical from the writers of Les Misrables and Miss Saigon.

Boublil and Shnberg's version of a 16th Century incident in which a Frenchman assumed the identity of a comrade he had presumed dead, ran for some 700 performances in the West End, survived a rewrite and won an Olivier award, yet lost money. Now it lives again, in a re-conceived production in Leeds.

Martin Guerre, unlike Les Mis, is not an epic story; on the contrary, it is a slight one which if not true would be fantastic. As presented here, though, it is a completely plausible play about human emotions, and an affecting one at that.

The staging is simplified though far from simple; the choreography bewitching. The Irish director Conall Morrison has brought on something of a renaissance for a show which could easily have fallen at the altar of theatrical commercialism. As it is, it should enjoy a long and deserved onward life on tour.

David Behrens

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.