After exceptionally high demand following selling out at the Watermill Theatre, Amélie The Musical came to the West End at The Other Palace to put on a performance highly worth seeing.
Based on the five-time Oscar-nominated film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the story of Amélie Poulain is told through an incredibly talented cast of actor-musicians and innovative stagecraft, drawing you into the world of the musical. With music and lyrics by Daniel Messé and Nathan Tysen, which stay true to the film, the story is told in a new and captivating way.
The story takes place in Paris and centres on Amélie, a shy and innocent waitress who works in a Montmartre café with her own sense of justice. After finding and returning a long-lost childhood treasure to a former habitant of her apartment and seeing the effect it had on him, she decides to help those around her in the hopes of making them happy and, along the way, discovers love with a man who collects discarded photo booth images.
Amélie, played by French-Canadian actress Audrey Brisson, stays true to the character of Amélie originally played by Audrey Tautou in Jeunet’s film as well as making it her own. After hearing that a musical adaptation of the film was being made in 2015, Brisson said that she would have loved to be a part of it after being a fan of the film, seeing it when she was 17 at the cinema.
As said by the director of the musical, Mike Fentiman: “Amélie is both a simple story that is complicated to explain and a simple message for a complicated time. It doesn’t strive for anything more than to be a gentle, indirect exploration of human isolation and our earnest attempts to avoid it. In a world that is currently fixated with the notion of boarders, Amélie is a musical that seeks connections. Kind connections, that close down distances and make us believe that it is possible to look up, smile and reach out to strangers.”
With the show's closing date being February 1st, I strongly recommend seeing this sensational musical if you have the chance.
Emilie Brown
