LONDON — “Candide,” the 1956 Broadway musical with the classic Leonard Bernstein score and the ever-problematic narrative, exists in more versions, or so it seems, than there are folios of Shakespeare.
So many people have had a hand in shaping it afresh over time (from Lillian Hellman to Dorothy Parker to Stephen Sondheim) that it is difficult to imagine what would make a definitive production.
But the revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory offers an exceptionally strong case for one, at least on a certain scale.
By powering through the Voltaire-inspired material with likability and zest with an array of notably strong voices across the board, and by allowing its leading lady, Scarlett Strallen, to give all the colors in her shimmering coloratura soprano their due, you feel a busy, sometimes bloated musical beating with a very real heart.
Ms. Strallen, who was last seen as Cassie in the revival of “A Chorus Line” at the Palladium, has downsized her surroundings for the in-the-round intimacy of the Menier, the small yet enterprising Off West End playhouse that has made a specialty out of reclaiming musicals by scaling them back.
Its revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” transferred for a commercial run last summer and now also exists on film, and a subsequent production of “The Color Purple” located the genuine pathos in a show that had looked too outsized for comfort when it was done on Broadway.
“Candide” is of a piece with those achievements, not least in the ability of its director, Matthew White, to enable Ms. Strallen and a mightily committed ensemble to send the Bernstein score soaring while letting the book and lyrics land where they will. (This particular version was first done by the Scottish Opera in 1988, though it has been edited further by Mr. White for the venue at hand.) The Menier’s deliberately modest approach means a nine-person orchestra that is a fraction the size of what you might hear in the concert hall, an arena where “Candide” feels equally at home. But it also affords a connection with a narrative picaresque that in other circumstances can seem awfully piecemeal as the jaunty hero of the title (played here by Fra Fee) weaves his way through an increasingly grim world only to find solace in the garden referenced in the show’s hymnal closing number, “Make Our Garden Grow.” That remains among the most goosebump-raising conclusions to any musical.
Mr. White’s deft and diverse cast mixes sprightly young talents like Mr. Fee with a pair of Olivier Award winners in James Dreyfus and David Thaxton, all of whom scamper among and about an audience seated on all sides of the action.
Mr. Dreyfus plays not just the eternally optimistic Dr. Pangloss, the purveyor of the quickly disputed notion that we inhabit “the best of all possible worlds,” but various figures who add to the catalog of woe that besieges Candide along his not-so-innocent way.
Mr. Thaxton, late of the Donmar’s 2010 revival of the Sondheim musical “Passion,” joins the Australian actor-singer Ben Lewis in contributing to a luxuriant vocal luster that puts to shame many of the pricier musicals around town. Ms. Strallen, for her part, occupies pride of place as the insouciant Cunegonde, the object of Candide’s youthful ardor who is herself subjected to the depredations of a brutal and unforgiving landscape before reuniting for a finale that jettisons the tonally inconsistent japery that can get in the way elsewhere. (There’s an awful Jewish joke, for starters.)
The role is associated to this day with its legendary originator, Barbara Cook, and comes with a ravishing first-act showstopper, “Glitter and Be Gay,” that here finds our luxury-minded heroine swiping jewels off a chandelier center-stage. As for the octave-climbing demands of the song, Ms. Strallen nails them with infectiously giddy ease.
It’s worth mentioning that it took me three attempts to get to see this “Candide,” my previous two having been scuppered by shifting illnesses among the cast.
Happily, at the performance where I was third-time lucky, there was scarcely a cough to be heard either side of the footlights. It was worth the wait.
Playgoers may also have to wait (or stand in line for return tickets) to get into “Coriolanus” and “Henry V,” two popular, star-driven Shakespeare productions starring Tom Hiddleston and Jude Law, respectively. (One wonders, by the way, if Mr. Law watched Mr. Hiddleston’s celluloid Henry V before appropriating the role for himself on stage. A baton here is being passed, as so often happens with the Bard in this country.)
But one intends these fine actors no discredit in wanting to call attention at this juncture to the particularly accomplished women in their midst — and in two plays not exactly renowned for giving distaff performers their due.
“Coriolanus” at the Donmar pairs Mr. Hiddleston’s riven man of action with the scarcely less formidable Deborah Findlay as Volumnia, mother to the martially-minded figure of the title. And for all that one is drawn to the name player of the occasion, Ms. Findlay seizes what stage time she has as a matriarch in extremis who relishes her son’s bloodlust only to turn a sharp tongue on a child whose battlefield bravado needs tempering, as well. (The production will be broadcast live in movie theaters in England and elsewhere on Jan. 30.)
Mr. Law’s Henry, himself no stranger to the casualties of war, sees out a play that contains its share of slaughter only to acquire unexpected levity and wit in the presence of his French bride-to-be, Princess Katherine. That part, in turn, is often a throwaway assignment but not as enacted at the Noël Coward Theater by Jessie Buckley, a young Irish musical theater actress, with surpassing charm.
The two circle around one another in terms of language and meaning, struggling to make sense of words even as their bodies make their shared desire perfectly plain.
And all of a sudden, a play packed with military derring-do acquires altogether separate shadings as a tender romantic comedy, Ms. Buckley the 11th-hour grace note to an evening shot through with machismo. And a glimpse or two of mirth.
Candide. Directed by Matthew White. Menier Chocolate Factory. Through Feb. 22.
Coriolanus. Directed by Josie Rourke. Donmar Warehouse. Through Feb. 8.
Henry V. Directed by Michael Grandage. Noël Coward Theater. Through Feb. 15.