“Though it falls foul of some of the difficulties that come with adapting books for the stage, ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ boasts an excellent cast and sheer commitment to its vision, soul and the message at its core.”
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“The grand romance of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 bestseller...is here played for gloopy sentiment and goofy laughs...This is weird, potentially mind-bending, existential stuff – and on a granular level the story is about how women cope and men deceive.”
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“ ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ could be cleverer, more profound, with better songs and a more exciting story. But there’s something about its ease with itself that is beguiling. It’s watchable and fun, and if it’s not a great musical it’s an enjoyable one. Henry’s story may end sadly, but ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ is determined to give you a good time.”
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“It seems like a high-end pop video wedged into a show but is a wonderful set-piece nonetheless. Questions around time and mortality are gradually explored more fully, and the romance comes to be felt rather than merely performed.”
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“This romance...leaps back and forth through different eras, making nonsense of conventional chronology. Captions announcing the ever-changing ages of the lovers — played by Joanna Woodward and David Hunter — in this unlikely tale give you only a tenuous sense of where you are.”
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“It’s perfectly amiable and enjoyable. But in each incarnation, Niffenegger’s original questions about the nature of love and the difficulties of sustained relationships get stripped back and what’s left is a saccharine story of enduring love. Without the philosophical underpinning, the narrative is uplifting but irritating as the essential difficulties of its time-travelling conceit are never resolved.”
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“Chris Fisher’s illusions are sometimes phenomenal, but there’s also rather a lot of Henry jogging offstage before he ‘travels’. It’s perhaps too literal for a story that uses sci-fi more as a metaphor for our relationship with time and love – whether it’s the agony of losing someone too soon, or the comfort of knowing that, in some sense, they always travel on with us.”
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“This new musical shoots its Cupid’s arrow straight at the tender heart of that hanky-clutching cohort – but you’d have to be feeling excessively sentimental to succumb to its anodyne appeal.”
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