Stiletto 

Rating: ★★
Venue: Charing Cross Theatre, London

Cast: Greg Barnett, Sam Barrett, Jack Chambers, Kelly Hampson, Douglas Hansell, Jewelle Hutchinson and Connor Wood 

In Italy in the 18th century, approximately 5000 boys each year were castrated in order to maintain higher pitched singing voices to allow them to take on female characters in Opera. 

Stiletto the musical is inspired by this time period and takes us to the winter of 1730 in Vienna where Marco Borroni (Jack Chambers) one such castrato who is on the road to stardom when he meets Gioia (Jewelle Hutchinson), a young poor black girl with big dreams. However, in a world where a woman is never to be seen on the stage, let alone one from a family of African slaves, she trades those dreams for the reality of searching desperately for a job. Marco vows to bring her to stardom with him and it’s only a matter of time before they fall in love. 

New musicals are always really exciting and I really wanted to like this one but unfortunately it missed the mark for me in more than one place. 

I was intrigued by the premise, the show addresses a time period I have not seen discussed on stage before, and the idea felt fresh. However the storyline itself was predictable and didn’t really draw me in, so I felt that I had to work to maintain my attention throughout. Act 1 dragged out quite a bit, with some scenes and songs going on longer than necessary, but Act 2 was much better paced. There was very little character development, leaving me feeling nothing for any of the characters and I wasn’t made to care about them during the sad/dark moments of the show; none of which hit particularly hard anyway. 

The story contained many subplots, supposedly in an attempt to give the side characters more stage time but instead made the show incredibly clunky and hard to follow, leaving us with multiple unanswered questions by the end and many subplots not wrapped up. I had a hard time understanding the nature of Marco’s relationship with his teacher, it was alluded to in different ways throughout the show and never cleared up. I also felt frustrated with the storyline given to Marco’s friend Niccolo (Connor Wood) who apparently has not spoken a word since a traumatic event but of course predictably overcame this to save the day.

There were extreme levels of talent demonstrated across the entire cast, with stand out performances from Jack Chambers, Jewelle Hutchinson, and Jennie Jacobs. The opening and closing numbers were my favourite, and lovely moments to highlight the strong ensemble and show off the entire cast in perfect harmony. The music and orchestrations were very strong, utilising an interesting mixture of musical theatre and opera. However, sadly most of the musical numbers were quite forgettable and didn’t captivate me in the way I wanted them to. The few numbers containing choreography were enjoyable to watch, but for the rest the staging was very basic and unremarkable. 

The highlight of the show was definitely the breathtaking set (Ceci Calf) and exquisite costume (Anna Kelsey) designs. Those elements alone were enough to be entirely drawn into the world that they created, and they were both beautifully highlighted by Ben Ormerod’s stunningly clever lighting design that created so much atmosphere and had a huge hand in telling the story. 

I left the show with an overall feeling of disappointment, despite the immensely talented cast, haunting score, and stunning set, costume, and lighting designs; the book really let this show down and I have to question whether the plot is really worth making a musical out of. 

You can book tickets to see Stiletto, here.

Review by Rachel