Hex
National Theatre, London, until January 14
A Christmas stinker is becoming something of a tradition at the National after Manor, last year’s one-star wonder. This year it has outdone itself with Hex. Rufus Norris, the theatre’s boss, clearly took it as a challenge when I said that Manor was the worst show I’d ever seen. This year’s effort is Norris’s own creation – along with his wife, Tanya Ronder – and there can be little wonder how it came to find a stage at this particular theatre. This sort of folie de grandeur is not without precedent – Cameron Mackintosh’s Moby Dick and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Stephen Ward come to mind – but at least those two theatrical titans were willing to put up their own money.
At the National, it’s taxpayers’ money Norris is playing around with. It makes it even more unforgivable when the show turns out to be without any redeeming features whatsoever.
It starts with a number of women in lavish ballgowns being lowered on to the stage and an opening number about fairies so anodyne I can’t remember a single word. The plot – and I use the word loosely – appears to be about a fairy who is also called Fairy (Neima Naouri) who forfeits her magical powers when she inadvertently hexes a princess named Rose (Rosie Graham) and the rest of the show focuses on her trying to fix her mistake.
The actors do what they can, but a musical with no decent music, an incomprehensible story, a pre-pubescent script and no characterisation doesn’t afford any of them a great deal of scope.
