ONCE REVIEW – Gorgeous romance transcends spectacle and defies jazz | platform

When “Once” opened on Broadway in 2012, later to enjoy a run in London’s West End, it was greeted with a degree of surprise. You can see why. In terms of the Great White Way, it is anti-music.

Based on the 2007 John Carney film, with a book by Enda Walsh and songs by Glenn Hansard and Marketa Irglova, it’s unusual not only to have a stripped-down production by John Tiffany set in a pub room created by Bob Crowley that’s all crumpled mirrors, wood paneling and dark corners. And not only in its popular atmosphere, with its pre-show singing performances and a group of actors and musicians who participate in the ceremony without fanfare.

But it’s also unusual to present such a collection of maudlin songs and a sombre written-on-the-wind ballad that defies rock music. More than once he threatened to explode in a dramatic display, and more than once he resisted. Even Stephen Hoggett’s action sequences owe everything to the physical theater angle and nothing to the high-kicking spirit of a chorus line. It’s the most frequented musical.

On the one hand, this makes it simple fun, an offering that welcomes you rather than flatters. Tiffany’s return brings together the original creative team to open Alan Cumming’s first season as Pitlochry’s art director. It has a delightful smoothness and economy of means. The music is rhythmically complex and sensitively arranged by Martin Lowe, and the vocals emerge organically. The production has the confidence to be muted or stately.

On the other hand, the story is short on peaks of emotion. A lovelorn Dublin driver (Dylan Wood) is pulled out of disillusionment by a surly young woman from the Czech Republic (Lydia White), also at a romantic crossroads, but only enough to make him pick up his guitar again and almost, but not quite, have a relationship with her.

With so little at stake and the mood so gloomy, a slight change in your fortunes leaves you less elated than relieved. The bittersweet ending is emotionally real, even if this meditative offering is an autumnal way to start the summer season.