The Devil Wears Prada review: ‘style over substance’

The Devil Wears Prada

Dominion | ★★✩✩✩

He might well wear Prada but if the devil has any taste in musicals he’ll steer clear of the one bearing his name. Though some have scorn for yet another musical adaptation of a film occupying yet another West End stage, the provenance of a show doesn’t much matter if the result is theatrical magic.

Yet despite the fact that this one boasts Elton John as its composer and has stage star Vanessa Williams playing the role of fashion mag editor Miranda Priestly (the Anna Wintour figure in Lauren Weisberger’s hit novel) this show is the epitome of style over content.

Sure, everyone on stage does a decent job with the material they’ve been given. In her West End debut Georgie Buckland is excellent as the unemployed writer whose life may be poor in means but who is richly in love with her boyfriend. And as Miranda’s ambitious minion Emily, Amy Di Bartolomeo delivers the performance of the show – no mean feat as Emily’s story is very much in the sub-plot tier of Kate Wetherhead’s script.

However, when the plot’s events are as predictable as this there is only so much reward to be reaped from the inevitable transformation of Georgie from bookish, fashion-challenged job applicant to Miranda’s personal assistant and high priestess of style.

The highlights in Jerry Mitchell’s production are all visual, such as the transition from New York to Paris (cue massive Eiffel Tower, of course). But there is little in John’s music or the choreography (also Mitchell), which takes its cue from the catwalk strutting of models, that makes the heart beat faster or the emotions soar. Nothing in the story does either. Meanwhile, the songs (with lyrics by Shaina Taub and Mark Sonnenblick) express pretty much what characters have already said out loud.

Compared to that other recently opened book and film-inspired musical The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this show has all the invention of a join-the-dots puzzle. The outfits may be amazing but the ovations and applause that greeted the end of this tedious evening has more than whiff of the emperor’s clothes about it.