To Float on the Wayward Wind

1/5 Glossy posters advertise From Here to Eternity as the next shining star of the West End musical scene. The experience in the Shaftesbury, though, feels more like the death throes of a supernova. The musical, derived more from the 1951 novel by James Jones than the 1953 film adaptation, fails to capture the magic that won the film eight Academy Awards. Missing the opportunity for rich period-accurate music, Composer Stuart Brayson opts instead to rehash trite conventions of musical theatre. Though the underscoring is pleasant, transitions from dialogue to song are dizzyingly abrupt. Ballads blur together while upbeat numbers blare gratingly. Rice relies more on vulgarity and colloquialism than on intelligent writing, of which he is capable. The bellowing male chorus reprises a cornerstone piece, “Thirty Year Man,” so frequently it seems as though Rice and Brayson wrote only half a musical and then recycled material. The performances of the leads further und...