If ambition was all a show needed to succeed, Andrew Sabiston and Timothy Williams’ Napoleon, much like the historical character it’s about, would be a true winner. Instead it’s a show that gets some things right, and some not so well, starting with the fact that it uses a narrator to engage audiences, a dramatic element that can’t help but feel lazy, even though the narrator in case is the fascinating Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (Matthew Patrick Quinn) who claims to be the man who created Napoléon Bonaparte.
By the time we meet the soon-to-be-Emperor, he’s already showing potential as a ferocious political leader during the French Revolution, and as played by Joseph Leo Bwarie, Bonaparte is nothing if not fire, always burning with the desire to fight, rule and especially to conquer. We follow Bonaparte’s military career and Talleyrand introduces us to the person behind Bonaparte’s eventual downfall: Josephine (Margaret Loesser Robinson), setting up what could’ve been a rather interesting “romantic triangle” of sorts, as we see him conspire against Josephine, all to see his dream of having Napoléon rule the world, become a reality.
Directed by Richard Ouzounian, who envisions the show as an intimate rock opera, think Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson meets Les Miz, Napoleon is a stylish affair which sees all the actors clad in leather and black fabric pieces which make the show feel modern without being distractingly anachronistic. The show features astonishing musical direction by Joshua Zecher Ross, and particularly rousing percussion by Jessie Linden who evokes enormous armies with the beat of her drums, but sadly every now and then the book drops some bombs that feel more destructive than a cannonball, like having Josephine do flatulence jokes or have Talleyrand deliver his lines like they’re coming out of Dr. Frankenstein’s mouth.
While Napoléon is certainly not ready to conquer wider audiences, there is much potential in the score, which is so layered it can recall Bizet and Andrew Lloyd Webber in equal measures (a song called “Plombieres” is as gorgeously seductive as “I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You” from Evita), and most of all in Bwarie’s masterful, passionate work as the Emperor defines the idea of a “star turn”, as he sings “I’ve kissed the very flame of true desire” you know you better stay out of his way.
