The Grinning Man

“First seen at Bristol Old Vic in 2016 before it deservedly transferred to Trafalgar Studios in 2017, this musical inspired by Victor Hugo’s L’Homme qui rit is no Les Mis. It’s much more interesting. Look, I’ve learned to love Boubil and Schonberg’s mega-hit musical and won’t hear a word against it, but what’s so very brilliant about The Grinning Man is that it’s so distinctive and so damned weird. Ghoulish even. Transposing Hugo’s story of Gwynplaine, whose face was mutilated in childhood leaving him with an eternal rictus grin, to some kind of 18th century England, this is an evening that is visually lush and musically inventive. Director Tom Morris succeeds in making it macabrely magnificent.”