By Timothy Ramsden
... and it gets better with age.
Not an easy life though. Shorn of James Stewart's benign presence as George Bailey, local lad forever making good in his native locality, and the cinematic sheen of Hollywood feelgood supremo Frank Capra's direction, the story of how one man holds New England community Bedford Falls together takes on a tougher aspect.
Paul Thornley's George is a natural good guy, unawares. He wants to leave home. As a child he's puzzled about how to prevent a tragedy. As an adult he shows moments of anger and despair. But realisation comes when Ace (the film's faltering guardian-angel Clarence) quite glibly shows George what local life would have been like without him.
The musical hits the stage in apt economic times as the story passes through the thirties Depression, George playing Antonio to the Shylock of big banker Potter, the nemesis who seeks to wreck the mutual-aid Society which keeps people away from his capitalist clutches. Except Shylock played by the rules, while Potter lies and robs.
It takes an overlong first act, over-crowded with incident to bring George's life to the point of despair. And Steve Brown's music is initially post-Sondheim vapid, replying on repeated or disrupted rhythmic patterns for interest, melodic flavouring confined to its cadences. Then there's an attractive dance-hall pastiche that becomes something of a refrain, and introduces more melodic colour into the score.
Post-interval it's payback time, as Ace shows George how individuals he'd helped would have suffered without him, and the whole town falls into a nightmare phantasmagoria of low-wage factory automata working to pay huge mortgages on their homes, the dance-hall corrupted to a den of mindless drinking and cold-hearted sex.
In this snappier act Peter Rowe's direction skilfully brings the piece together dramatically, while Dick Straker's video, which in act one almost gave the lovers the moon, does so again, emphasisig also the town's cog-in-machine existence. And Brown's score is at its most vivid. With Thornley catching George's natural optimism and the abysm when he's undermined by Paul Leonard's slimily conniving and malevolent Potter, the musical moves affectingly to its sudden, aptly understated close.