Trevor Nunn slips up with this tuneless assault on the English language

It was fine, as maybe Dixie thought first time round, until they burned Atlanta. I was beginning to think that the director, Trevor Nunn, had pulled off the impossible and made sense not only of Margaret Mitchell's 1,000-page novel but the book, music and lyrics penned by one Margaret Martin, a writer hitherto best known for Pregnancy and Childbirth: the Basic Illustrated Guide (but who had somehow acquired the musical rights from the Mitchell estate).

The storytelling was clear, John Napier's set uncluttered, and the central triangle of Scarlett the selfish Southern belle, Ashley the Southern gentleman and Rhett the Southern cad as robust as ever. An interesting symmetry even began to emerge, with both men agnostic when it came to the Southern cause and both fighting for a woman who believed in nothing. True, there was no dancing to speak of and no songs worth the humming, but the evening was proceeding painlessly.

But once Atlanta had gone up in flames - represented by a blazing Confederate flag and a partial demolition of the set - I began to worry. Scarlett and Rhett rode out of town on a cart drawn by an invisible horse. You wanted them to go clop clop. Although Nunn was using the techniques he pioneered in Nicholas Nickleby - characters commentating on their own stories and voicing their thought bubbles - we were being pushed into the trickery of budget troupes such as Shared Experience. The first half ended with a song that, I fear, contained the lyric "The world I used to know so well/Why did it have to turn into a living hell?"

I must congratulate Vanessa Feltz on her prescience. Of all the B-list celebs papering the stalls on the first night - Joan Collins, Christopher Biggins, Babs Windsor - she was the only one not to return after the interval. She would have been in for another hour and 45 minutes during which the show lost all focus. For scenes at a time Rhett, Scarlett and Ashley disappeared from view to make way for discussions, sometimes set to music, of political reform, impeachment and splits in the Republican Party. In a misguided attempt to make this story of self-involved Southern whites politically correct, attention turned to the liberated slaves and their songs of freedom.

And those songs! They began to scale the depths. Refrains included "Born to Be Free", "These Are Desperate Times", "The Wings of the Dove", until the inevitable "Tomorrow Is Another Day". This was clich� orchestrated in the hope it would make it less of a clich�. It merely magnified the assault on the language. And still there was not a memorable tune, a curious crime when the 1939 film had one of the greatest theme tunes ever, by Max Steiner. The original cast recording from this stage musical would be a gift for your worst enemy.

The storytelling became confused. Scarlett shot a Yankee soldier and stole his looted money and jewellery but was still so broke that when the farm got a big tax bill she went begging to Rhett, in jail, for a handout. And Rhett? How come one moment he was facing the noose and the next he was out of jail and profiteering again? Interest was captured only a couple of times: when Rhett and Scarlett's daughter was thrown to her death from an invisible horse (the mime was effective this time) and when Rhett scooped Scarlett off her feet and made to rape her. This, worryingly, got a big cheer from the first-night audience, as did, of course, his "Frankly my dear" line, though I doubt whether either of the Margarets meant Scarlett by this stage to be quite so unlikeable.

I feel sorry for Jill Paice as Scarlett, who worked hard to engage our sympathy and could certainly deliver a song. Darius Danesh, him off Pop Idol, scored a personal triumph as Rhett. Admittedly his mike was turned way up but he commanded the stage, kept his accent together and even found a new way to say "I don't give a damn" so as to make it his own. Edward Baker-Duly brought moments of pathos and depth to Ashley. But this is where my plaudits stop, somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Funnily enough, having entered thinking a musical of Gone With the Wind utterly pointless, I left believing the right one could work very well. Not this one, however, not without a 45-minute cut and some songs. Then it might be salvageable. Otherwise, tomorrow is another play.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

It was never going to be easy stepping into the shoes of screen icons Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable but Jill Paice and Darius Danesh have risen to the occasion and made the roles of Scarlett and Rhett their own in Trevor Nunn�s musical adaptation of Gone with the Wind.

Set in 1860s Georgia, Gone with the Wind is a remarkable story, spanning 12 turbulent years in the life of Scarlett O�Hara, the beautiful but headstrong daughter of cotton plantation owner Gerald O�Hara. Outwardly carefree, Scarlett�s happiness is thwarted by the one thing she can�t have � Ashley Wilkes.

An obsessive love, it endures despite Ashley�s marriage to his cousin Melanie and her own marriages of convenience, first to Charles Hamilton and later to Frank Kennedy. Even a third marriage to the cynical blockade runner Rhett Butler, with whom she shares a stormy relationship, is no obstacle.

Yet the winds of change threaten everything Scarlett holds dear as Civil War sweeps into Atlanta, destroying her hopes and dreams and eventually, her love for Ashley�.

I was one of a second wave of journalists charged with reviewing this epic production so, of course, I�d read the earlier damning reviews. However, I went with an open mind and was soon of the opinion that I was seeing an altogether different production.

Yes, it is long � a little over three and a half hours to be precise � but, with just over a thousand pages of small print, so is the book. And forgive me if I�m wrong, but the film ran for a marathon four hours and I don�t recall anybody complaining about that. Besides, the essence of Mitchell�s enduring and well-loved story would surely be lost in a �cut� version.

That said, the second act which is considerably darker than the first, could be trimmed simply by cutting down the musical numbers. And yes, I know this is a musical but does Melanie really need to sing on her deathbed? I don�t think so. The music, however, is far from superfluous and catchy little ditties are interspersed not only with love songs but also with negro spirituals and blues numbers. Even so, listening to them just the once isn�t enough for their worth to be truly appreciated.

As I�ve already hinted, Danesh and Paice are superb as Rhett and Scarlett � Danish is roguish charm personified, yet at the same time, he manages to expose the inner pathos of a man deeply wounded by betrayal and the death of his beloved daughter. And Paice, as pretty as a picture, eases herself into the demanding role of feisty heroine who learns too late the error of her ways. There�s an undeniable chemistry even when grief tears them apart.

In fact, I cannot fault the cast in any way and special mention must go to Madeleine Worrall as Melanie, Edward Baker-Duly as Ashley, Natasha Yvette Williams as Mammy and Jina Burrows as Prissy, whose performances capture the characters they portray in a way I�m sure Mitchell envisaged them � helped in part by the rich array of costumes.

Finally, John Napier�s uncluttered set that extends into and around the auditorium suits the production well. It may lack the extravagance of certain shows and be somewhat short on spectacle � the burning of Atlanta, for example � but it serves it�s purpose adequately. Besides, these are shortcomings � if you can even call them that � that work very much to the cast�s advantage, allowing them to shine without unnecessary distraction.

If you love the book, you�ll love this production. And if the film was your introduction to Gone with the Wind, I don�t think you�ll be disappointed. I just hope critics haven�t condemned it to failure because that really would be a pity.

Few shows that open in the West End today attract such a storm of controversy as Sir Trevor Nunn's adaptation of Gone With the Wind. Darius's breathtaking performance on Wednesday night however, seems to have hushed those sterner critics.

It's no secret that the press previews for Gone With the Wind were not exactly everything that Sir Trevor had hoped for. The show was too long (45 minutes longer than billed), main cast members were struck down by a bouts of illness and certain staging effects went completely up the proverbial spout. Nunn even had to cancel an evening's performance so that vital revisions and repairs could be made at the last minute. With this of course, thanks to the whiff of catastrophe flaring some critics' nostrils, media interest began to suddenly balloon out of all control. Things, it has to be said, were looking decidedly shaky for the official opening night.

So, as the New London Theatre began to fill with the glitterati of the West End on Wednesday, a nervous calm must have hung in the air. Though not all of it positive, one thing is certain; never has such a buzz surrounded a new show like this before: not before it has even opened. This, quite simply, was show time.

Darius Danesh's electrifying performance then seems certainly to be the shot of adrenaline that the show needed. As Gone With the Wind reached its dramatic conclusion he was duly greeted with a rapturous standing ovation to rival any West End triumph. The structure of the show is said to still need some tidying up but, with Darius's spellbinding turn at the helm he may yet steer this the way of the classic Les Mirseables, which also had an uncertain start.

The great Clarke Gable is clearly one of Hollywood's most iconic performers so stepping into shoes like his is not a task to be undertaken lightly. That said, it seems that with performances like the one which met the West End establishment on Wednesday night, it is clear why Darius toppled the likes of movie star Hugh Jackman to get the role.

It may still be a controversial show but it's undoubtedly the production that everyone in Theatreland is talking about. And, as the old adage goes, there's only one thing worse than being talked about...

Set during the Civil War of the 1860's, Gone With The Wind follows the story of Scarlett O'Hara (Jill Paice). Beginning at the O'Hara plantation in Georgia, Tara, Scarlett is on the hunt for a suitor and secretly pining for Ashley Wilkes (Edward Baker-Duly), a man who is due to marry his cousin Melanie Hamilton (Madeleine Worrall). After realising that she is never going to be with Ashley, Scarlett decides to marry Charles Hamilton (David Roberts) shortly before he leaves to fight in the war. Before her marriage Scarlett meets the mysterious and unpredictable Rhett Butler (Darius Danesh) and finds her life doesn't follow the smooth path that she had hoped for. Torn between men and family drama, Scarlett's life is about to change forever.

Gone With The Wind is considered a classic movie and it's not one we ever expected to see transferred to the West End. Directed by Trevor Nunn, this new musical version transfers the essence of the movie to the stage and gives the audience value for money with its 3 and a half hour running time. Recreated on a round stage with the audience sat in semi-circles around it, Gone With The Wind is a touching, exciting and emotional piece of theatre.

Many were sceptical when Darius Danesh was cast as Rhett Butler. His reality TV pedigree may put some people off seeing this show but they'd be missing out. Danesh is both charismatic and talented and he wipes the floor with the rest of the cast. His southern accent is superb and his singing voice stronger and richer than showcased on either of his solo albums. Danesh is a bright star and he captivates on stage, making the character of Rhett Butler his own.

Gone With The Wind has a huge cast and at times the stage is simply bustling with cast members. As a whole the cast work impressively well together with Jina Burrows (Prissy) and Natasha Yvette Williams (Mammy) standing out from the rest. Burrows may be a small woman but she has an incredible voice. As one of the O'Hara family servants, Prissy gets a few moments to shine and Burrows has the crowd whooping and cheering with her triumphant solo song. Williams as Mammy is both funny and entertaining. As the key servant to the O'Hara family the audience feel for her and like Burrows she has an incredible singing voice.

Sadly the weakest link is Jill Paice as Scarlett O'Hara. Maybe she hasn't settled into the character yet but her accent was all over the place. Sometimes she sounded Southern but a lot of the time her accent struggled to sound anything other than English. This became off-putting and with the show being so long it broke our concentration on several occasions. Singing wise, Paice was spot on and she had chemistry with Danesh that had us believing the romance between the two.

Gone With The Wind is an enjoyable play but it does suffer from a few faults. Despite being 3 and a half hours the show feels a bit rushed in the final half hour. The inclusion of original songs in the mix actually works and Gone With The Wind is a triumphant production. Some may find the pace a bit slow but we enjoyed kicking back and watching a good old-fashioned drama unfold before our eyes. The true star here is Darius and his fans will be glad to see him back on top again. If you're after a show with impressive special effects and an affecting story then this is the one for you.

Against the odds, the true star of the show is Darius Danesh, who banishes all memories of his ludicrous Pop Idol buffoonery with a performance of subtlety and roguish charm as Rhett Butler. His deep velvety voice is ideally suited to Nobody Knows You one of the rare moments when GWTW transcends musical cliche.

You just wish he had more to do, for while GWTW huffs and puffs, Darius aside, it never comes close to blowing the house down.

By the time I came out of the first night of Gone With The Wind it felt as if the New London theatre had turned into the Old London. The celebrated 1939 movie version of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 American Civil War novel was big in every way - in spectacle, emotion, and running time - but the only thing equal in size in the lumbering, laborious new stage musical version that opened this week is its excruciating length, which clocks in at more than three and a half hours.

In every other crucial way, the material has been shrunk and diminished. Some of this was no doubt intentional as director Trevor Nunn sought to emphasise the domestic, intimate story at its heart in Scarlett O'Hara's 12 year odyssey of love, sickness and betrayals that are played out against an epic canvas of war and famine.

But this musical version of the story leaves the audience hungry too, for both a real emotional engagement with any of the characters as it rushes through its interminable narrative and for the melodic uplift that might have rescued them along the way.

With book, music and lyrics by debutant writer Margaret Martin, who is a doctor in public health in California, it desperately needs a show doctor to fix it, not a medical one. While songs can provide a useful way of telescoping emotion and offer a chance to explore characters' thoughts and inner lives, Martin's score merely provides a tepid, generic aural wallpaper that seems to repeatedly stop the action instead of advancing or intensifying it.

The actors are forced to narrate a constant parade of incident instead of being able to interpret their place in it. Jill Paice�s bustling Scarlett is kept busiest of all and, though she nobly keeps her resilient character�s spirits up (and even turns into a musical Mother Courage, wheeling a cart back to her beloved Tara), there�s not much of a spark in her engagement with the wooden Rhett Butler of Darius Danesh.

He may famously declare: 'Frankly; my dear, I don't give a damn,' but by then neither does the audience. There�s not much more fire even in the legendary burning of Atlanta, represented here by a briefly smouldering flag and some collapsing flats on the upper level of John Napier�s set that wraps itself around the auditorium as it famously did for Cats that Nunn and Napier previously collaborated on in this same theatre.

That show pushed the British musical in a brand new direction and ran for 21 years. This one, however, only makes one painfully dull evening feel like 21 hours.

Such is the hold the iconic 1939 film of Gone With The Wind has over me that I can�t walk past a velvet curtain without wanting to tear it down and find someone to run up a gown. That�s what the spoilt Southern belle Scarlett O�Hara did when she needed to tart herself up and persuade Rhett Butler to give her the money to pay the Yankee taxes on her beloved home Tara. So, frankly, my dears, I do give a damn when anyone treads on my dreams. It�s hard, however, to get worked up about Margaret Martin�s musicalisation of Margaret Mitchell�s magnificent romantic epic because it wholly fails to blow one away. It�s less Gone With The Wind than Marooned On A Millpond. Not bad, just tedious. Martin frames the tale in the style pioneered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Eighties for Nicholas Nickleby, with the narrative shared between several characters. But the story grinds to a halt whenever the music starts. In the handful of spirituals sung by the black characters (The Wings Of The Dove is particularly good), the piece fleetingly develops some soul.

Other songs are hampered by gratingly awful lyrics: �I�m the queen of the county, the belle of the ball. But, like Humpty Dumpty, I had a great fall.� Martin gives the slavery issue a romanticised and risible politically correct airing, with the O�Haras treating their slaves like family. Beyond that, it�s not clear why she or director Trevor Nunn pursued this unnecessary exercise. Much of the dialogue is lifted verbatim from the film and none of the characters has been re-examined afresh, unless you count Scarlett�s Mother Courage moment when her exhausted horse dies and she pulls the cart herself with her friend Melanie and her new baby back to Tara. Another unlikely addition has Prissy, the half-witted maid, learning to read and becoming a teacher. Otherwise, it�s a cribbed, confined and, above all, pale imitation of the film: the burning of Atlanta is suggested by flames licking the Confederate flag, Bonnie falls off an invisible pony and Scarlett�s wardrobe (in spite of the looted curtains) is meagre.

Vivien Leigh pulled off something remarkable when she made the vain, heartlessly opportunistic little spitfire Scarlett both irresistible and adorable. Jill Paice is pretty and pert, but we neither laugh at her nor cry with her, and she remains stubbornly resistible. Our hearts belong instead to Natasha Yvette Williams�s Mammy and to Darius Danesh as the dashing daredevil Rhett Butler, whose voice could charm the birds from the trees. Having said that, I�m sure the Rhett I know and love wouldn�t have sung, though he might have whistled, but it would have been the theme tune from Max Steiner�s glorious film score.

When I was a lot younger and a lot more stupid, I remember saying to Patrick Garland that the commercialism of the West End made it well nigh impossible for a truly great work to be staged. The man who directed My Fair Lady on Broadway put me down gently. Shakespeare, Jonson, Shaw and every other playwright since the beginning of time had to produce work that was commercial, he pointed out. Commercialism was, he told me, a necessary discipline. Can you imagine, he asked me, what sort of self- indulgent nonsense we would have to sit through if people started to put on plays for themselves rather than the public? This conversation occurred to me after an hour of Sir Trevor Nunn�s musical Gone With the Wind. It occurred to me again many times during the two and three quarter hours that followed. Margaret Mitchell�s novel � turned into a classic film with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh � ought in its long- awaited stage incarnation to be the most commercial production in all London, perhaps the whole world. This is, after all, a very strong and much- loved brand that we are talking about. And yet the fact is, it isn�t at all commercial. Sir Trevor, as the play�s director, has been ridiculously uncommercial � or to put it another way, self indulgent � and the last people he seemed to have in mind as he constructed this big, ugly unwieldly turkey were the poor devils he expected to part with cash to come to see it. What is more, the legions of people listed in the credits seem to have been unforgivably craven. Not one of them could pluck up the courage to say to Sir Trevor:� Enough, already. What�s the point of this scene? Can we not discard this utterly forgettable song? Get out the red pen and cut, cut, cut, Sir Trev, because no one in their right mind is going to sit through all of this.� Nobody said that; or if they did, Nunn chose not to listen. That�s the problem with very grand directors. I have an idea that he wanted to make this production look and sound a bit like the Porgy and Bess he directed at the Savoy in 2006 to considerable acclaim.

Alas, Margaret Martin, his composer this time round, is no George Gershwin. You would think in all the time this play runs she would come up with at least one hummable song, but alas not. Then there is the former Pop Idol contestant Darius Danesh and Jill Paice in the roles of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O�Hara. Frankly, my dear, they are all ham. If this was an episode of Dead Ringers I�d say they took off Gable and Leigh fairly respectably, but this is theatre and some rather more sensitive playing is required. Also, given the story, a bit of sexual chemistry wouldn�t go amiss either. On these counts they both fall flat on their faces. The other principal roles seem perversely cast. Edward Baker- Duly, a young gentleman who looks very much like an Australian surfer with his bottle blond hair, plays Ashley Wilkes, a part that the clipped and quintessentially English Leslie Howard made his own in the film. Julian Forsyth, as Scarlett�s father, appears to be doing a take- off of the late Welsh actor Hugh Griffith.

Poor Madeleine Worrall as Melanie Hamilton, wheeled onto the stage on her death bed, is required to burst into song (� You must have hope,� she trills, before expiring). This is becoming painful. You could have more fun over this length of time in Terminal Five. I don�t know what it is about the theatres clustered around Aldwych but they seem to breed turkeys down there. After Lord of the Rings and Gone With the Wind is, I fear, the mother of them all. � Gone With the Wind�, New London Theatre, London WC2 ( 0870 040 0046), to 27 September

...Not like the much-feted Scarlett O'Hara, a spoilt Southern belle who, failing to win the man she thinks she loves, and being thrust into the turmoil of the American Civil War, becomes a model of the survivor capitalist - and loves being raped. If you try really hard you can see why Trevor Nunn thought it might be feasible to stage Gone With the Wind. The film charges up its silhouettes and swagger, its simpers and sulks with a hard-hitting score: it might seem to be a musical waiting to happen. But this one looks both spendthrift and threadbare. Margaret Martin, who provides book, lyrics and music, has done a rotten job. Not because she is, as the routine description runs, 'a woman doctor' (Chekhov was 'a man doctor'), but because she has no talent for this task. 'Pallid' is too colourful a description of her lyrics, which flop out like automatic writing ('Make each one whole/ In body and in soul'). The music - an occasional murmur hardly amounting to a song - is so forgettable you can hardly believe it's happened.

A super-inept device has actors spelling out the plot as it jerks along: 'The two impregnable citadels of her life had cracked...' (which you don't see); 'She went quickly down the front steps' (which you do). The whole thing lasts for ages, not because of epic roll, but because it's a string of dull little bits, each over in a flash, none leading anywhere. As one of the wiseacre servants says to Ashley, who pops home from the war and then pops back two minutes later: 'Seems like yow jess got here and now yow off again.' On press night, Jill Paice's Scarlett was sweet though reedy; Darius Danesh's Rhett - growly and smugly disdainful - was dominating, if occasionally alarming: instead of snogging Scarlett, he gnawed her. By far the best singing came from the servants, with Natasha Yvette Williams as a massive-voiced matriarch and Jina Burrows as the young maid who improbably announces she's turned bookish. But, despite some anti-KKK tweaking, they were lumbered with a number, 'Born to be Free', which sounds like an advertisement for a game park.

You might expect hollowness of heart to be matched by a feast for the eyes. But the most surprising feature of the show is its lack of spectacle. At first, it looks as if John Napier's design might go on the rampage. Perhaps modelled on, God help us, The Lord of the Rings, where the vegetation escaped from the stage, the set spreads itself around the auditorium, with picket fences in the dress circle and twiggy things around the proscenium arch. But when it gets to the famous set pieces, things turn puny: the burning of Atlanta (an incinerated flag and a purple light) might as well take place in a grate; when Scarlett goes among the war-wounded, she picks her way over half a dozen bodies and then picks her way back again. And apart from that, Mrs Lincoln? Well, there's some feeble physical theatre (people turning imaginary keys in invisible doors) which sits ill with the sumptuous crinolines that are forever tipping up like lampshades. And there's no dialogue, unless you count brainbox Ashley declaring that Thackeray is 'a master of his craft'.

In the foyer, they're selling aprons with 'I'll never be hungry again' on the pockets. Next, perhaps, will be potties bearing the title of the show.

The American civil-war saga has a great set, it's just a shame about the lousy songs, weak leads and inept dramatisation By Kate BassettSunday, 27 April 2008 'Give me strength!" cries Scarlett O'Hara. "As God is my witness, they are not gonna to lick me. I'm gonna live through this!" Frankly, enduring Trevor Nunn's big, new, seemingly interminable musical adaptation of Gone with the Wind, I was muttering much the same. Novelist Margaret Mitchell's saga of love and the American Civil War � immortalised in the classic Hollywood movie � has epic sweep, of course. It may, indeed, be worth revisiting her portrait of over-confident Americans � in this case, the white supremacists and wealthy plantation-owners of the Deep South � marching to war then seeing their cosseted world go up in smoke. A topical moral lesson may even lurk in Scarlett O'Hara's journey from pampered brat to determined survivor in hard times, striving to retain her family home. To give Nunn's designer, John Napier, his due, the set creates a sense of both panoramic breadth and intimacy.

A wide cyclorama-style sky arcs over a wooden verandah of faded grandeur, with weathered picket fences, old Confederacy flags and slave auction signs encircling the auditorium's balcony. However, the dramatisation is inept. With book, lyrics and score by a Dr Margaret Martin who has no musical track record, the storytelling feels, paradoxically, long-winded (at over three-and-a-half hours) and ludicrously rushed. It lurches forward spasmodically, in such a way that military leave for Scarlett's first sweetheart, Ashley, looks more like a mini-assault course: up the verandah steps, about turn, and down again. With more than 70 minor characters, you don't care about any of them either. Nunn possibly thought this show could be another Les Mis or Nicholas Nickleby, but his stylistic use of physical theatre is tired and patchy here � a few mimed doors and some extras pretending to be a horse.

Worse still is the poor acting in the leading roles. Darius Danesh as Rhett has rakish swagger and a mellifluous singing voice, but when in a passion he becomes ridiculously melodramatic. He kisses Scarlett like a frenzied dental hygienist, trying to scrub her teeth with his moustache. Meanwhile, Jill Paice's Scarlett is pretty yet not engaging, with strident singing and no genuinely fiery sexual magnetism. With folk tunes spoilt by sugary orchestrations, Martin's unmemorable songs wreck any dramatic momentum. They are the theatrical equivalent of speed bumps. You can almost hear the show's chassis grating to a halt. Only the Gospel numbers by the O'Haras' servants � especially Natasha Yvette Williams's splendid Mammy and Jina Burrows's Prissy � rise above all this as they look forward to emancipation.

The siege of Atlanta lasted four months. This new musical extravaganza, directed by Trevor Nunn, lasts four hours. Oddly, though, the musical feels longer. I suspect the siege of Atlanta had better jokes, too, and surely better music.

Margaret Mitchell�s squillion-selling American civil-war block-buster, so famously filmed with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, has been turned into a show by Dr Margaret Martin, a Californian expert in maternal, child and family health. Which can only prompt the response: don�t give up the day job, honey. Because this Gone with the Wind is one big, windy, flatulent raspberry.

The key to any good musical is the music, and, though Dr Martin studied music theory at the Colburn School of Performing Arts,LA, it doesn�t show. This is depthless pap, boasting every clich�. The live band reaches an identical brassy climax every time Rhett and Scarlett kiss. Or a telegram arrives. Or a child dies. Or at any other point when the audience apparently needs to be told: �This bit�s dramatic, okay, dumb bums?�

Only occasionally are there hints of gospel or good ol� cotton-field blues. Most of the songs hint at nothing but other bad musicals. When you think what influences Martin might have been open to - when you consider that the same period in the South produced the sublime soundtrack for the film Cold Mountain, with its astonishing sacred-harp songs - it�s an abysmal disappointment.

Then there are the lyrics. These have been �adapted� by Nunn, which only makes you wonder what they must have sounded like before. At one point, I think my ears deceived me. Rhett Butler apparently sang: �The fog was thicker than pasta, just inches from disaster.� Maybe the fog was thicker than plaster, I�m not sure. Either way, you feel embarrassed for all concerned. The reprises don�t help, when the first time was more than enough. Every number bulges with earnest, depressingly aspirational sentiments. People kneel on the ground, gazing heavenward, vowing to be strong: �I will survive. I will go on. I will spread my wings and fly.� That kind of thing. �All men fight for freedom, from the moment of their birth.� Eh? No, they don�t. The emancipated blacks? They sing �Now we are freeeee! Free to live our lives, the way we want to beeeeee!�, or something like that. My ears kept tuning out.

The performers cannot be blamed. They bawl along with genre-appropriate quavering emotion and end-of-line whispers, and always pronounce it �Gone with the Hwind�. An intriguing array of accents suggests everywhere from Bantry Bay to Santa Fe.

Jill Paice is a perfectly credible Scarlett. In other words, you frequently want to slap her. In the movie, she slaps her slaves. That�s cleaned up here, even though portraying racism is not, duh, racist, and its excision only adds to the pervading blandness.

Bestriding this shallow world like a colossus, and the only reason this gets two stars rather than one, is Darius Danesh, commanding and charismatic as that �insufferable peacock� Rhett Butler. Left hand in his pocket, right hand sweeping wide in manly gestures, eyebrows tauntingly cocky, voice like molasses, he perfectly suggests a cavalier (and possibly clap-ridden) Southern gent.

Nunn seems to have directed sleepwalking. John Napier�s design has grandeur, encircling the auditorium with picket fences, trees that, on closer inspection, turn out to be made of stacks of old muskets, and vast flags of Old Glory and Bonnie Blue. Yet it�s curiously static, allowing for no changes, and, after four hours, your eyes are as bored as your ears.

This epic of love and war is reduced to a series of interminable tiffs and tantrums between Rhett and Scarlett, expressed in limp, forgettable songs, the aural equivalent of chewing cotton. Will they, won�t they? Will she recapture him? Will he stay with her? Frankly, I fear, you won�t give a damn.

Gone with the Wind, the new musical version of Margaret Mitchell's epic novel, and one of the most ambitious theatrical ventures of this or any century, officially opened at the New London Theatre April 22.

And, well, the show will go down in history in one way: The critical reception was one of the most relentless and unanimous pummelings in memory. The show, they said, was dull, lumbering, dreary, long-winded, generic, leaden and interminable. There was much playing on the phrase "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (Honestly, you'd think the critics could work a little harder for their barbs.) And many wondered why esteemed director Trevor Nunn attached himself to the project in the first place.

The new musical co-stars Darius Danesh as Rhett Butler and Jill Paice as Scarlet O'Hara. (Paice pulled out of the production right after opening due to ill health, but she's back this weekend.) Music and lyrics were by sociologist-turned-composer Margaret Martin, who may well go to being a composer-turned-sociologist after this.

Not since the early-Nineties days of mega-flops like King, Moby Dick and Which Witch has the West End seen reviews as savage as those that greeted Trevor Nunn's �4.75 million, four- hour musical adaptation of Gone With the Wind earlier this week.

"Connoisseurs of big, bad musicals must rush to catch Gone With the Wind in case it's quickly blown away on gales of ridicule," said Evening Standard critic Nicholas de Jongh.

"It feels interminable, but moment by moment it also seems ridiculously rushed," said Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph, adding that the music and lyrics are so lacklustre that "I felt like screaming every time a new song started".

Listening to unknown American actress Jill Paice and Pop Idol loser Darius Danesh as Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, Benedict Nightingale in The Times was left "hankering for Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh who breezed and dazzled their way through the film" and "wishing the musical just wasn't a musical".

The Guardian's Michael Billington found the whole exercise "extravagantly pointless".

As if this weren't enough, Gone With the Wind was dealt another blow when Paice dropped out of Wednesday's matin�e and two evening performances with a "bad throat infection" and was replaced by an understudy. A second tranche of critics who were due to see the show, the first theatrical effort by novice writer and composer Margaret Martin, were sent home. A blessing of sorts, perhaps.

The show's producers have been incommunicado as they deal with the latest setback. This misguided, expensive adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's muchloved historical romance, presented without star names in the unforgivingly modern New London theatre, and vying with fond memories of Victor Fleming's iconic film, is beginning to smell like a flop.

Most musicals need to run for at least a year to break even. Any less and the backers will lose all or most of their �4.75 million investment. "We haven't had a proper, massive theatrical disaster for ages," commented one West End insider. "Maybe it's time we had one."

Of course, it's too early to tell whether Gone With the Wind has really, truly failed - the ticket-buying audience is the ultimate arbiter of that - but the signs were there from the start that it would be far from a great success. So how was it allowed to happen?

Margaret Mitchell's novel won the Pulitzer Prize and became an instant bestseller when it was published in 1936, and Victor Fleming's 1939 screen adaptation is widely considered the most successful film ever. The book still makes around �500,000 a year in sales for Mitchell's estate. But Nunn and co must have known that subsequent attempts to capitalise on the tale of Rhett and Scarlett have foundered.

Two literary sequels, Scarlett and Rhett Butler's People, were laughed away by critics. A musical stage adaptation at Drury Lane in 1972, featuring a young Bonnie Langford and a horse that defecated on stage during press night, prompted No�l Coward to opine: "They should cut the second act - and the child's throat." It closed quickly.

The dazzling, expansive visual imagery of Fleming's film, and the iconic performances of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, are ingrained on the collective imagination. Any attempt to recreate them on stage was always likely to come a poor second.

None of this deterred Margaret Martin. A doctor of public health, charity founder and single mother of three from California, she decided at the age of 45 to adapt Gone With the Wind as a musical simply because, she claims, she thought it would be a money-spinner. Later, she said that as a former "battered teenage mother", she came to identify with the endless crises Scarlett has to face. Martin's qualifications for writing a musical were a degree in music theory and an apparently unquenchable reservoir of self-belief.

When she first bid for the stage rights to Mitchell's book from the William Morris agency - by putting on a solo "dog and pony show" of her songs and script for them - she was rejected and told her work was "sincere but inexperienced".

Unabashed, after two more years' work she sent a CD to Trevor Nunn, having read an interview with him and learned he was a leading director. Against the odds, Nunn apparently couldn't get the tunes out of his head.

One of the UK's leading classical directors who had run both the RSC and the National Theatre, Nunn has also made a fortune from musicals such as Cats and Les Mis�rables, and helmed flops such as Chess and Acorn Antiques.

"Nobody knows what will work and what won't in musical theatre," he told me in 2006, after he had staged Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White.

He signed on to Gone With the Wind as director and adaptor - the second job title seemed designed to imply that the experienced Nunn would smooth over any infelicities committed by the novice writer.

In 2003, Nunn and his main backer, Aldo Scrofani of Columbia Artists Theatricals, decided that the first production should be in London rather than New York, apparently on the curious reasoning that British audiences would be less slavishly fond of Victor Fleming's film.

It may be, too, that the (predominantly American) producers overestimated Londoners' tolerance of Southern melodrama twinned with middle-of-the-road music. Ironically, given the current financial situation, exchange rates for sterling were also more favourable when London was chosen for the opening.

When the production was officially announced back in 2006, all sorts of alarm bells began to ring for seasoned observers. Even with Nunn at the helm, it seemed unwise to lavish such a large budget on, and trust an epic and beloved story to, an unknown writer.

The choice of the Seventies, concrete New London Theatre as a venue was a strange one. The site of Nunn's greatest commercial triumph, Cats, which ran for 21 years there, it has an open horseshoe-shaped auditorium and a bare apron stage ill-suited to grand panoramas such as the burning of Atlanta, or the vista of endless wounded Confederate soldiers, in Gone With the Wind. With 960 seats, it also has half the capacity, and hence half the bums-on-seats earning power, of big musical houses like the Palladium and Drury Lane.

Then there was the casting. Those who remembered Jill Paice recalled her as a colourless presence with a decent voice in The Woman in White, although the producers could legitimately counter that Vivien Leigh was unknown when she became Scarlett.

But the announcement of Danesh's casting came just as audiences seemed to be getting heartily sick of leading men and women plucked from reality shows. Rehearsals were dogged by a whispering campaign that the show was too bland, too long. Finally, it opened in the middle of the credit crunch.

But, as Howard Panter, director of the Ambassador Theatre Group, says, theatre is historically resilient in a recession-"People decide not to buy a house or a car but treat themselves to a West End show instead." He also denies that the New London itself could be to blame, saying "there are no bad theatres, only bad shows", while stressing that he has not seen Nunn's production and "I only wish them well".

In the end, in theatre, it's the story and the direction and the acting that matter, not the venue or the economy. The critics saw the prolixity and the skimpiness of the script, the way supernumerary characters narrated the action, and the naturalistic scenes - in which a baby is born, and Scarlett and Rhett "pretend" to have a horse - as admissions that the play could not equal the book or film.

The songs and the acting are undistinguished and unmoving - and if Gone With the Wind is anything, it should be moving. One veteran theatreland figure, who asked not to be named, sums it up: "I watched half of it. It's poor material, simple as that. The songs are dreadful, and it's amazing that Trevor, having done marvellous things with so many scores, didn't see that was the case."

For now, Gone With the Wind is soldiering on, like Scarlett O'Hara grubbing for roots in the unforgiving red mud of her Tara homestead. No figures are available for advance sales but the show is booking until September, although a box office assistant said that plenty of seats are available for most performances "because it's a new show". There has not been a rush of returns in the wake of the reviews - perhaps because See Tickets, which operates GWTW's main booking line, does not offer refunds. A digital advertisement, unprecedented and expensive, has been taken out amid the lights at Piccadilly Circus.

If Gone With the Wind can pull in enough punters to justify a Broadway transfer, where some of the problems could be fixed, then the producers may yet claw back their investment. The Lord of the Rings, another flawed musical based on a popular book and film, did not break even on its �12.5million budget in Toronto or London, and hopes to finally go into profit in its forthcoming third incarnation in Germany. So ultimately, it's the fickle public who decide.

As Trevor Nunn has been compelled repeatedly to point out, Les Mis�rables got terrible reviews when it first opened and it is still doing all right. Taking inspiration from her heroine Scarlett O'Hara, Margaret Martin must be knotting her fists after the buffets of the week and reminding herself that, yes, tomorrow is another day.

WHAT THE PUNTERS THOUGHT

Noel Cooper, 55, a human resources director from London.
It was well performed but rubbish. Too much plot and far too long, yet another example of a new musical gone terribly wrong.

Emma Sylvester, 26, a sales executive from the Isle of Dogs.
I was spellbound. The performances were great and I nearly cried at one point. I found the acknowledgement of freedom for the slaves particularly profound. I saw the film as a child but I don't think I completely understood it then - seeing it now as a musical I really did.

Eric Wood, 60, an engineer from Bromley.
I think it was hard going. I certainly haven't come out feeling entertained. It was a bit too long. I found it didn't explain the storyline very well, it wasn't clear to me.

Nasser Rahimi, 69, a university professor from Edgware Road.
I really enjoyed it. I'm Iranian and I came just to see Darius. He was brilliant. Maybe they could have made it shorter but overall it was one of the best shows I've seen.

Donald Rumbelow, 68, a professional tour guide from south London. I thought it was excellent. The portrayals of Rhett and Scarlett were both great. It just needs a little strengthening here and there and a bit more oomph but it's still a very good show, very good value. It certainly didn't deserve the reviews it got.

Sir Trevor Nunn's ambitious re-staging of Gone With The Wind is an unconventional musical � more a faithful reproduction of the classic movie with songs.

In order to capture such a big novel/film on stage, Sir Trevor regresses to the narrative technique that he perfected for the RSC with Nicholas Nickleby, some 20 years ago, with everyone chipping in and completing each other's sentences. This maintains drive throughout three and three quarter hours � roughly the same duration as the movie.

Commencing in 1861, this stirring tale is one of love among the losers of the old, slaving South during the American Civil War.

The director builds his show around American actress, Jill Paice who he has imported from Broadway to play the Vivien Leigh role of Scarlett O'Hara. Miss Paice rises to the occasion � a stunning beauty with a sweet voice and sympathetic manner, although she might be a little too nice to really excel in this heartless part. Perhaps the high point of the evening is when she brings the house down (Atlanta having already spectacularly gone that way) with the interval curtain song, Gone With The Wind.

Before then, this wilful teen had seduced blond Ashley Wilkes, Edward Baker-Duly, married on the rebound and then found herself widowed at 16. She is then destined to suffer untold tragedies over the next dozen years, which see 600,000 men die in a civil war over slavery.

The two figures fated to direct the young woman's future could hardly be more different. Tiny Madeleine Worrall plays pale, modest bluestocking, Melanie Wilkes, the woman who unwittingly �stole� her cousin Ashley from the heroine. Melanie represents goodness while Rhett Butler is its antithesis. Pop Idol discovery Darius Danesh, is a Clark Gable lookalike, towering over his fellows like some basketball star. Danesh has just enough charm and wit to carry this role off, together with a gravelly voice that calls to mind Nick Cave after a heavy night.

Designer, John Napier has done a wonderful job, with a stage thrusting into the audience and a wood-effect set that surrounds them. His budget may have been big but costume designer, Andreane Neofitou was not left short, excelling with the ladies, especially Scarlett who must have around 15 costume changes during the evening.

The music by theatrical newcomer Margaret Martin, who does far better with the book and lyrics based on Margaret Mitchell's classic novel, rarely excites and often instantly fades from the memory. Strangely, while on leaving the theatre pretty much every Rhett Butler song has gone, much of the best is left to the slaves led by Broadway star NaTasha Yvette Williams, who gives a fine performance as Mammy, Jina Burrows' Prissy and an ensemble headed by Ray Shell in the stirring Follow on the Wings of a Dove.

These stars wowed a first-night audience that had the paparazzi snapping frantically as it was adorned by celebrities including Barbara Windsor, Joan Collins, Vanessa Feltz and Duncan James.

Gone With The Wind works best as a re-telling of a classic tale in a fresh style but then, there has already been a film that did that. Whether today's soundbite society can accept such a long play in the guise of a musical, even one of high quality, remains to be seen, especially with top price tickets at �60. One fears that it won't and that will be something of a pity.

There really can't be many people who don't know this story, or the film starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable which retains its popularity even after several new generations have been born. I have it on good authority that my (male) boss even has a copy. Oh dear!

With this musical version entrusted to the hugely experienced hands of director Trevor Nunn, you'd think this was going to be a reworking that would enhance the original and bring us something rather new and a bit special. I'm afraid to say that it's not much of a reworking, and there's very little in it that's new. Of course, for the faithful followers who love the book and the film, they'll be overjoyed. But it seems to me that a great opportunity has been missed. Moreover, Nunn's recent revival of 'Porgy and Bess' gave us a tantalising indication that Nunn could go on to do some wonders with 'Gone With The Wind', making it even more woeful that a golden opportunity has been let slip.

The approach to telling this monumental tome of a story has been to utilise narration delivered by various members of the cast. It's not a new device and can often help to move a story forward without making it drag. Here, it just becomes confusing because we're continually looking round to find the person who's currently throwing us the link to the next bit of action.

But there's another aspect to the narration which is both infuriating as well as insulting - it tells us the 'bleeding obvious'! For example, when Scarlett shoots a yankee soldier a narrator says, in solemn tones that sounded like it was being delivered by God himself, that she had 'just shot a man'. Well, yes, we did actually see that! It's not necessary to tell us what we can see - isn't that in lesson number one of the 'learning script writing' course? Or even the 'learning how to direct ' course? Ok, well you can forgive someone missing a thing like that - but then it happened again! After Scarlet shoots the yankee, another woman starts rifling through his bag and finds a set of diamond earrings. �He must have stolen these� she says. No, surely not! Aren't diamond earrings on the list of basic kit for all soldiers serving in the field? Or is that the Salvation Army I'm thinking of? And even if I do sound like I am griping here, it also happened in the scene where Scarlett is rubbing her head against the curtains and gets the idea to turn them into a new dress. The voice says �rubbing hear head on the curtains�, just as Scarlett is doing the action! Painful.

Following on from this, there were times when the whole production seemed to be teetering on the brink of, or dicing with farce. In fact, the woman sitting next to me found much of the show hilarious, at one point descending into a cackle that had the entire row shaking for several minutes. I could see her point. For example, the scene with the baby being born is very funny as the music reaches a crescendo just as the baby appears. Thankfully we didn't get to see the chord being cut! And there's a scene with wounded soldiers wriggling across the stage which seemed odd to say the least even if I coud see the idea behind it. There are a number of other scenes which could easily be taken from a melodrama. Or is that the point? On the other hand, the burning of Atlanta is a very effective bit of technical wizardry that lends a much-needed respite to the doggedness of the story, and provides a suitable climax to the first half. It calls for a small army of stagehands to clear it all up during the interval � good news on the employment front, at least!

Apart from one or two reasonably interesting ballads, the tunes are not exactly fighting to get into the inspirational category. Only a couple of them got rousing receptions, even from the glitzy first-night audience after they had downed their interval bubbly. However, there was one irritating song about 'desperate times' where the phrase was repeat ad nauseum and reiterated again in the script. I think we all got the point the first time it was sung!

Edward Baker-Duly makes Scarlett's obsession with Ashley Wilkes more believable and understandable than his counterpart did in the film. The latter looked as though his hair style was the result of a nasty encounter with mains electricity, and was about as handsome as the result of a union between an ageing toad and a toby jug. Baker-Duly is both handsome and virile, and has the acting talent to go with it.

In the main role as Scarlett, Jill Paice does well to cope with the considerable amount of time she has to spend on stage, and also gives an effective characterisation of the spoilt brat obsessed with the idea of romantic love. However, though I heard other audience members on the way out praising Ms Paice's singing voice, I'm afraid there were a couple of times when she sounded like she was shouting rather than singing, especially in her number 'Gone With The Wind'. I suspect if she carries on like this, her voice inevitably will be.

Pop Idol star Darius Danesh takes the role of the lovable, rich and roguish Rhett Butler. Danesh is a multi-talented singer, songwriter and actor, but he's forced here into being a Gable look-alike which underscored how much of a lost opportunity this production really is. Why not make Rhett dashing but different, even if it didn't fit exactly with the novel or the film?

'Gone With The Wind' is extremely long at just 15 minutes short of 4 hours. I began to think we would all be incarcerated in the New London while we waited for the First World War to break out all over again. Even so, there are events that take place so rapidly that marriage, birth and death zoom by in the blink or two of an eye. And though the production never stalls for scene changes, there's just so much to cram in that it is basically overwhelming. What the piece really needed was a complete overhaul that would have given us a different perspective, even if it couldn't have included everything in the book. I think it's a case here of 'playing safe' to ensure box office success.

Whatever I might say about Gone With The Wind, there are probably enough devotees out there in musical-lover land to keep the doors open for years to come. But even some ardent devotees will be most definitely disappointed if only because the minor characters don't get the same kind of attention they did in the film, and the rest of the show just doesn't have the same capacity to enthrall as its filmic counterpart. For those new to 'Gone With The Wind' there will be a bigger disappointment for it 's the kind of story that is simply part of the past and there were times when the very concept seemed dated and a little dire. Still, tomorrow is another production, isn't it?

WHEN the American Civil War ended after four years, the survivors staggered from the battlefields, exhausted and thankful it was all over. It feels like that when the cast finally take their bows in this show and, after three-and-a-half hours, you emerge with gratitude into the night. (I almost expected to be greeted outside by volunteer ladies with refreshing tea and buns, so exhausting was it).

Based on the original Margaret Mitchell doorstop novel, set in the Civil War and its aftermath, the audience is battered into some form of historic submission as the saga of Rhett Butler and the conniving Scarlett O�Hara unfolds. The writer and composer of this frequently dire attempt to turn a great novel into a musical is Margaret Martin �� a maternal and child health expert. We are evidently not talking Rodgers and Hammer�stein here. Scarlett and Melanie kneel over the body of a dead Yankee soldier In fact, what we are talking is a bizarre musical mish-mash of styles. There are few songs that linger in the mind longer than a few seconds � and Ms Martin flagrantly breaks the golden rule that must be observed of all composers of hit musicals. That is, you must come out with a good tune ringing in your head. The only thing ringing in my head is one of my own � called Utter Relief That The Whole Thing Is Over. With its 36 actors playing over 90 parts, the show is often a blur of activity, some of it blundering and clumsy, while at other times it does move with a certain slick pace around the stage.

John Napier�s clever and adaptable design does help this limping effort and he clearly brings a great deal of colour to his onstage conception. Jill Paice has a sweet enough, carrying voice as Scarlett but her portrayal of the calculating survivor lacks that extra element of cunning. You should really want to leap on the stage, put Scarlett over your knee and give her a good tanning as a punishment for all her vixen-like behaviour. SEARCH for: Darius Danesh is a sturdy, manly Rhett, with a good, deep voice and bags of swaggering arrogance. He is clearly talented and, basically, only his performance saves this show from crumbling into utter mediocrity. There are some other notable performances that shine through the repetitive bleakness of this production. I particularly like Natasha Yvette Williams as Mammy. She brings a huge grace to the part, as a powerful and passionate voice � and the wardrobe department has wittily provided her with a torpedo-like frontage which shakes every time she hits a high note. And little Jina Burrows, as the squeaky Prissy, brings considerable wit and a neat little singing voice to her part.

You wonder why a director as eminent as Trevor Nunn has become involved in a show that could go down in the history of theatrical �oddities. He is fond of the big canvas, as in Les Miserables. But, sadly, Gone With The Wind, despite its meaty story, just flaps limply in the breeze.

PAUL'S VERDICT: 3/5 Frankly it's hard to give a damn about this wind

The new London musical ``Gone With the Wind'' runs three hours and 45 minutes and includes all the climactic moments of Margaret Mitchell's long book. The producers don't lack ambition. What they need, however, is a pair of scissors -- and some songs.

Healthcare specialist and first-time writer Margaret Martin (book, music and lyrics) doesn't have an ear for a punchy melody or the gift of being able to drive a story through song. Characters repeat in bland tunes the emotions that we've already watched them go through in their scenes.

In case we still don't understand, they helpfully tell us as well. ``Ashley returned home,'' says Ashley, returning home. ``Scarlett felt there was death in the air,'' says Scarlett, trying to look like she is feeling death in the air. It's almost as good as having surtitles.

Martin dodges the issue of the 1936 novel's distasteful racism, and simply expunges it. Here Scarlett adores all her black slaves, who then become her paid workers. The black characters respond with big gospel numbers full of greeting-card sentiments about hope and struggle.

So much has to be crammed in -- the fall of the South, Scarlett's three marriages, the freeing of the slaves, the death of Melanie -- that the bitty scenes whiz by in a superficial rush.

The material, though poor, gets a handsome treatment. Trevor Nunn directs with fluid efficiency, and keeps things slick. Designer John Napier creates an attractive antebellum country look with lots of old wooden fences stretching around the theater.

On the thrust stage, a large wooden box spins around to create different locations. On one side is a veranda to conjure up Tara, Scarlett's home. With another spin, it serves as Belle Watling's bawdy house in Atlanta.

Jill Paice (Scarlett) looks pretty in her tiny-waisted crinoline, and says ``fiddle-dee-dee'' just like a southern belle should. Her voice is sweet but has an acid quality when she pushes it at the top.

Darius Danesh, best known for losing the TV talent shows ``Popstars'' and ``Pop Idol,'' has a surprisingly authoritative and charming presence as Rhett and sings well. His performance is not freshly minted, however, and is modeled too closely on Clark Gable's role in the movie version. With that caveat in mind, he still does a fine job.

Edward Baker-Duly and Madeleine Worrall fill out the roles of Ashley and Melanie pleasantly enough, and Natasha Yvette Williams is a suitably feisty and long-suffering Mammy.

They don't rescue a fundamentally flawed and overlong show. I suspect it will be blown away soon. Rating: *

LONDON (Hollywood Reporter) - Tomorrow is another day for Scarlett O'Hara but how long that will remain true for the new musical "Gone With the Wind" is another question.

Three-time Tony-winning director Trevor Nunn has delivered a long-winded show with rushed scenes, dull music and lyrics so banal that Rhett Butler is unlikely to be the only one who doesn't give a damn.

All the familiar characters are there, but without the book or the film in mind, they would not add up to much. Jill Paice, Broadway star of "Curtains" and "The Woman in White," works hard as Scarlett, but the songs put too much strain on her pleasing but delicate voice.

Darius Danesh, who won fame on the U.K. television show "Pop Idol," does a much better job of channeling Clark Gable as Butler. He's a fine singer and not a bad actor. The rest of the cast have the burden of delivering a series of musical numbers that, unusually for a musical, are not listed in the program.

North Carolina gospel singer NaTasha Yvette Williams, who played Sofia in Broadway's "The Color Purple," and London stage veteran Ray Shell lend their joyous vocal power to one or two songs that have a gospel influence but have forgettable melodies and familiar phrases like "All God's children born to be free."

Supposedly based on the best-selling Margaret Mitchell novel rather than the Oscar-winning 1939 movie, the production mirrors the film closely except that it places tedious songs where character development and genuine drama should be.

Without a lot of scenery, Nunn's regular designer John Napier must rely on the large spaces of the New London Theatre with a movable porch for the Tara and Twelve Oaks estates and a long balcony. All the action takes place on the theater's large, bare apron stage, with characters chasing off through the audience via several gangways.

Most of the big set pieces are merely described by the chorus so that epic scenes are reduced to spoken exposition. To depict the burning of Atlanta, a large Georgia flag is set on fire while some scenery in the balcony collapses and cannons boom offstage.

The show is a first-time effort by Los Angeles resident Margaret Martin, who has a doctorate in public health from UCLA and among other things runs the Harmony Project, which provides free music lessons to underprivileged children in Los Angeles.

She obtained the rights from the Mitchell estate and took the work to Nunn, whose musical hits include "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby," "Cats" and "Les Miserables." For the British director, this appears to be one literary classic too much.

Former Pop Idol star Darius Danesh got a critical slating for his performance as Rhett Butler in the new production of Gone With The Wind last night - despite a standing ovation from the theatre audience.

The 27-year-old Glasgow-born singer plays the role made famous by Clark Gable opposite US performer Jill Paice as Scarlett O'Hara in the new Trevor Nunn �4.5million musical version of the 1939 classic film.

Reviews for the US civil war epic were unanimously hostile this morning, with most saying it was over long at three hours and 40 minutes, while others moaned about the music.

But despite the production being branded "extravagantly pointless" by one writer, the star-studded audience at the opening night still included Joan Collins, Barbara Windsor, Michelle Collins, David Frost, Ben Elton, Twiggy and Duncan James,

Darius said afterwards: "I had a blast, it was my first opening night and it was great to cut my teeth with the inimitable Trevor Nunn," and defended the sheer length of the production, by arguing: "We're still shorter than the film."

It's not the first time the pop singer's come in for a critical savaging though, having been blasted for his version of Britney Spears' Baby One More Time in the first series of Popstars.However, he didn't give up and became one of the public's favourites in the series of Pop Idol the following year, where he came third.

It's not Darius's first time on stage either. He's previously been in the West End productions of both Guys and Dolls and Chicago.

A new musical version of Gone with the Wind starring former Pop Idol contestant Darius Danesh has left the critics unimpressed.

"Director Trevor Nunn has delivered a long-winded show with rushed scenes, dull music and banal lyrics," said Ray Bennett of the Hollywood Reporter. The Guardian's critic Michael Billington, meanwhile, said there was "something extravagantly pointless about the whole enterprise."

Speaking after Tuesday's first night performance, however, the celebrity guests were happy to sing the show's praises.

"I think it will run for a year, possibly two," was the confident prediction of Duncan James, formerly of boy band Blue.

"Darius really commanded the stage and I loved the way they used the space."

"They did a brilliant job," said veteran actress Joan Collins, adding she had had "a thoroughly enjoyable evening".

Her sentiments were echoed by I'm a Celebrity... winner Christopher Biggins, who said he had been "moved to tears" by the end.

McFly singer Tom Fletcher was also impressed. "Darius was a real surprise," he told the BBC News website.

"I've never seen him on stage before and I thought he suited the role perfectly."

Adapted from Margaret Mitchell's epic novel about the American Civil War, the musical sees Danesh play the dashing Rhett Butler to Jill Paice's impetuous Scarlett O'Hara.

First published in 1936, the book was famously filmed three years later with Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in the lead roles. Adapted for the stage by US writer Margaret Martin, a specialist in maternal, child and family health, the show clocks in at three hours and 40 minutes.

That was at least half an hour too long for some of the first night audience - among them former Pop Idol judge Nicki Chapman.

"I know they've cut it down but I still think it could be trimmed," she told the BBC News website.

Biggins, meanwhile, said he "would have loved it to have been two-and-a-half hours."

"It's difficult to adapt a classic for the stage and I did think the first act dragged," agreed James, who also had reservations about the show's songs.

"There was nothing very memorable in the score," admitted the singer, who appeared last year in West End musical Chicago.

Fans of the film version will be pleased to hear the musical replicates most of its key scenes and dialogue.

The latter includes Butler's legendary "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" - a line Collins said Danesh delivered "brilliantly". Some theatregoers, however, may be unsettled to hear the black slave characters refer to themselves as "darkies".

Fire regulations, meanwhile, mean the burning of Atlanta has to be symbolically represented by a single flaming flag that is speedily extinguished.

Danesh has Gable's swagger, and his moustache. His above-average height also means he literally towers over his co-stars.

American theatre star Paice does well too to make a character so indelibly associated with another actress at least partially her own.

It remains to be seen, though, whether the musical will prove enough of a draw to prove the critics wrong.

Gone with the Wind continues at the New London Theatre.

Trevor Nunn famously helped the British musical to go in a brand new direction when he directed Cats that ran at the New London Theatre for 21 years.

Now he returns to the same address - and with the same designer John Napier - to turn back the clock on some of the advances in musical theatre that he initiated, offering this utterly stillborn, reductive translation of an epic novel Gone with the Wind that turns out to be a resolutely old-fashioned piece of narrative theatrical staging.

But Nunn, obviously aware of the benefits of copying from the best, has at least plagiarised himself and applied the same storytelling techniques that he used to bring Nicholas Nickleby to the stage (on that occasion with writer David Edgar, but this time adapting Margaret Martin�s version of Margaret Mitchell�s novel himself), with actors constantly stepping out of the action to provide a running narration. However, whereas the Dickens was allowed the luxury to breathe in a two-part, seven-hour epic, this time it has been fatally condensed.

Though Nunn brings his customary sense of kaleidoscopic, framing detail, he cannot harness the dense, hurtling narrative into a compelling drama - history may be one damn thing after another, and so eventually is this southern American civil war drama that follows a feisty heroine, Scarlett O�Hara, across 12 years of turbulent personal and political upheaval.

Disastrously, however, it is simultaneously so rushed and laboured that it fails to provide any emotional connection with its characters, who fail to emerge with any personality. While songs can provide a useful way of telescoping emotion and offering a chance to explore characters� inner lives, Martin�s songs here are earnest, aural wallpaper and merely seem to stop the action instead of advancing or intensifying it.

The actors are left trying to dramatise a constant parade of incident, instead of being able to interpret their place in it. Jill Paice�s Scarlett is kept busiest of all, and though she keeps her resilient character�s spirits up even as she indomitably faces war and famine (and even turns into a musical Mother Courage, wheeling a cart back to her beloved Tara), there�s not much of a spark in her engagement with the wooden Rhett Butler of Darius Danesh.

There�s not much more fire even in the legendary burning of Atlanta, represented here by a briefly smouldering flag and some collapsing flats on the upper level of John Napier�s set. But this numbing musical has already collapsed in on itself long before then, anyway, marooned in a no-man�s land of generic melodies and leaden, unconvincing drama.

Frankly, my dears, I did give a damn but not as big a damn as I had hoped. To put it another way: fiddlededee to some but not all the things that are occurring in a piece I wasn�t always sure should exist.

Margaret Martin�s book for her musical version of Gone with the Wind is almost too faithful to Margaret Mitchell�s novel and, at 190 minutes, certainly too long. Trevor Nunn�s cast sometimes left me hankering for Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, who breezed and dazzled their way through the film. Sadly, I often found myself wishing the musical just wasn�t a musical.

But that�s partly because Nunn has drawn on his experience with Nicholas Nickleby in 1980, giving us a production in which cast members inject pieces of narrative into the proceedings. This means that the story of Harlot Mascara � sorry, Scarlett O�Hara � doesn�t need songs in order to hold the attention. There are confusing bits (how does Rhett Butler escape that Yankee hangman?) and there are longueurs, especially in the second act. But the first half often has that brisk, energetic yet epic feel that one associates with Nunn�s work.

So Jill Paice�s Scarlett mournfully eyes Edward Baker-Duly�s Ashley Wilkes, the gentlemanly drip she adores, as he marries the virtuous Melanie Hamilton, while she is resisting that glamorous maverick, Darius Danesh�s Rhett. Meanwhile, war threatens those Southern belles and the Confederate flags that half-circle the audience. War duly arrives with the explosions, red light and mini-collapse of John Napier�s timbered set that signal the burning of Atlanta. Add plenty of hobbling soldiers and graphic description of Scarlett stepping over the dead, and the defeat of the South is adequately evoked. As for Danesh, he has the sauntering suavity that Gable brought to the role of Rhett, but not enough dash and danger. Those qualities are also lacking in Paice, who is warmer than Leigh in the film but still doesn�t have much fire burning within.

She gives us a bit of a feminist reading of Scarlett, which means you believe in her when she�s doughtily battling to save her beloved Tara, but you don�t fully do so when fury or passion are needed. And for a woman surely meant to embody the hard South that�s about to emerge as well as the genteel South that�s dying � well, she�s too nice.

Have Martin and Nunn tried to bring political correctness to Margaret Mitchell? Just a bit, notably when they�re treating black characters, and especially Jina Burrows�s Prissy, who is no ditsy airhead but a young woman who will use her freedom to become a teacher. Indeed, a gospel-style song in which the ex-slaves celebrate their liberty was received more warmly than any other, and a solo by Natasha Yvette Williams�s excellent Mammy almost equally so, even though neither was that relevant to the plot.

But then the rest of the music is rather so-so and the rhymed lyrics pretty flat. Did I really hear Scarlett�s dad boast in Irish ballad style that from Kerry to Connemara you won�t find land as fine as Tara? Or Scarlett sing that the life she used to know, the world she knew so well, �why did it have to turn into a living hell�? Compare that with the eloquent simplicity that marked every aspect of Nunn�s revival of Oklahoma!. It just doesn�t have the variety, the quirkiness or the moral power. And it doesn�t need the tunes.

It was one of the most anticipated musicals of the year: a new stage adaptation of Margaret Mitchell�s famous Civil War-era novel Gone With The Wind, adapted for the stage by first-time stage writer Margaret Martin and directed by Trevor Nunn. Throw in American actress Jill Paice and former reality star Darius Danesh as leads Scarlett O�Hara and Rhett Butler, and it makes for a very intriguing project indeed. Caroline Bishop went to the New London for the first night.

Designer John Napier has transformed the sometimes awkward and characterless New London auditorium into a surprisingly intimate space, using the whole theatre to conjure 1860s Georgia. A wooden fence runs round the circle, dusty 19th century signs hang on the wall and the wooden stage segues into walkways which run through the audience to the back of the stalls, allowing the action to spill off the stage. In the centre is a revolving structure which functions first as Tara, the home of our heroine Scarlett O�Hara, then becoming many other locations within her 10-year journey.

The story begins at Tara, the plantation run successfully by owner Gerald O�Hara, whose three daughters live a life of luxury, attended to by a household of black slaves. The eldest daughter, spirited and fiery Scarlett, is 16 when we first meet her, and in love with unobtainable neighbour Ashley. As the years go by, Civil War tears apart the region and forces Scarlett to use all her canny means and womanly ways to save Tara and keep her head above water.

Mitchell�s novel is a doorstopper, the hugely successful 1939 film was a four-hour whopper, so it was always going to be a challenge to fit the action into a stage production manageable for fidgeting audiences. Despite cuts during previews, the show is still longer than most, yet the storyline whips along at such a pace that the length is not overly noticeable. However, this does mean that some months, even years in the story are covered briskly by the narration that runs throughout, and some characters have few scenes within which to make an impact.

This is not the case for Jill Paice, who has plenty of time to develop the character of Scarlett � in fact, she has the mammoth job of being on stage the entire time. Her tiny waist and delicate features suit the crinolines of a Southern belle, while she ably displays the array of character traits that make up the passionate, determined, selfish and spiteful Scarlett. As for her Rhett, the man whose love Scarlett misguidedly spurns in favour of Ashley, Darius Danesh cuts an imposing figure. His dark looks, deep voice and stature are apt for this roguish romantic hero, and he does a fine job of sweeping the diminutive Paice into his arms.

Martin�s musical score is less about traditional crowd-pleasing musical theatre numbers and more about an extension of the narrative, though it provides some memorable moments when leaning on gospel music, notably in On The Wings Of A Dove. A vocally talented cast includes Natasha Yvette Williams as Mammy and Jina Burrows as Prissy, who both capitalise on their time in the spotlight.

Covering the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, the post-war money-grabbing resurrection of the South and, of course, Mitchell�s great love story, writer Martin and director Nunn are packing a lot into an evening. Over three and a half hours later, it is all Gone With The Wind�

It's not a line I recall from the 1939 film of Gone With the Wind, but we're told something really startling about Scarlett O�Hara at the start of the second interminable act of Margaret Martin�s new musical play: �She walked every day for miles looking for yams.�

Frankly, my dears, I don�t give a yam, but there's a bizarre suggestion in Trevor Nunn�s production that Scarlett morphs into some kind of Mother Courage of the American Civil War, pulling her baby and belongings around on a gun carriage after the burning of Atlanta before breaking into a hymn to the transforming powers of flatulence: �The life I used to know has gone, gone with the wind.� No more curried eggs for her, then.

Jill Paice as Scarlett gives everything she�s got to this item, which I cannot label as the programme does not list musical numbers. These numbers, anyway, don't stand alone, but sidle out of the show with their footling orchestrations like guilty little secrets. If only they�d remained so. One exception is a rousing anthem to freedom by a chorus of black slaves left over from Nunn�s recent sub-standard Porgy and Bess.

The productions by Nunn and John Caird of Nicholas Nickleby and then Les Miserables were two of the greatest in our theatre of 20 years ago. They were rooted in the RSC company ideal and expressed stories of epic scale and panoramic detail in a passionate stage language that summarised other early 1980s experiments in narrative theatre and, in the case of Les Miserables, found a soaring, modern Verdian musical style to match.

Here, the distribution of the story among scattered third person parties around the huge plantation verandah design of John Napier seems like a solution to a problem, not the result of any urgency in communication. Once inside the unfriendly New London, the arena, you have to admit, is thrilling. As in his King Lear and The Seagull for the RSC last year, Nunn knows exactly how to exploit this space to the full, arranging the company hoe-downs and cakewalks with real flair, much flattered by the wonderful array of crinolines, gingham skirts and frock coats by costume designer Andreane Neofitou. The burning of Atlanta, lit by Neil Austin, is an orange glow in an ever-changing sky.

Jill Paice runs a gamut of emotions from A to B, as Dorothy Parker once said of Tallulah Bankhead, but she does so with endearing charm. There's a collective intake of breath at the sight of �Pop Idol� Darius Danesh as Rhett Butler; he�s about seven feet tall and blessed with an extraordinary bass baritone voice that he may find a way of using properly one day. For now, oddly stiff and smarmy at the same time, he looks like a joke entrant in a Clark Gable lookalike contest.

Nunn has bolstered his company with such reliable performers as Susan Tracy, Susan Jane Tanner, Jeff Shankley and Ray Shell, but none of them has much chance to shine in the encroaching, deadly mediocrity of the material. Edward Baker-Duly has a fair stab at Scarlett�s beloved Ashley Wilkes, but the stand-out performance, in every way, is that of the mighty-bosomed Natasha Yvette Williams as the black maid Mammy, surely a shoe-in for best supported actress of the year.

Pre-launch rumours suggested that this was going to be a disaster. Not so much Gone With The Wind as Gone For A Burton, went the whispers.

Well, it is not quite the catastrophic shipwreck suggested. But frankly my dears, it�s a close shave.

The show has been written (words and soupy music) by a Californian health worker, Margaret Martin, and is just about recognisable as the Margaret Mitchell novel which was turned into the 1939 film with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.

Never having been completely convinced by the film, I was prepared to be won over by Jill Paice and Darius Danesh, who here play Scarlett O�Hara and Rhett Butler. And I was, to an extent.

Mr Danesh has a husky bass voice and is dashing, even if, with his mutton chop whiskers and long legs, he resembles a Victorian villain from a Monty Python sketch.

Miss Paice, blessed with a tiny waist, has a wildness and independence of spirit. She certainly needs the latter to survive Sir Trevor Nunn�'s B-grade direction.

What a mess of exposition the first half hour is. Gangs of actors wander on and off, then back on as different characters, then back off, as the scene is set, re-set, then switches yet again as the audience is told that this is north Georgia in 1861. America�s civil war is about to occur.

The O'�Hara's are of Irish descent � cue the penny whistle and some appalling Oirish from old man O�Hara who asks raven-haired Scarlett: �'Is it crying you are?'�

She�d have been justified in replying: 'Yes. Because I can�t take this script and your hamming any more!�'

Things pick up when Mr Danesh arrives on stage and there is a spark of love interest and humour. But where is the danger? When Rhett and Scarlett finally kissed there was a wolf whistle from one theatregoer and giggles from others. Where is the story�s raw allure?

There are so many people milling about on stage, some of them in ludicrously bad fake beards, that it is hard to concentrate on the lead actors.

You can�t do a camera close-up on stage as you can in a film. After 32 minutes an unfortunate torpedo struck Monday�s show. An unexplained clanking noise started from the wings and continued for five minutes while the poor cast tried to press on with proceedings. Scarlett�'s first fianc� arrived, did his courting, was accepted, impregnated her and then died all before the clanking abated. Oh well.

Setbacks are like buses. There'�s always another hurtling down the road, as Scarlett O�'Hara finds to her pretty cost.

The music feels a bit off-the-peg. One of Rhett�'s early songs could be a reject from Fiddler On The Roof.

Apart from the routine allotment of ballads we are given a hoe-down, a black gospel number, a deathbed warble from Scarlett�'s friend Melanie (sweetly done by Madeleine Worrall) and a bedtime story from Rhett to his beloved child.

After such a cynically sugary moment it is obvious the little darling is doomed.

Sir Trevor has reportedly been chopping away at the script like a Chindit wielding his panga on jungle vegetation but it remains well over three and a half hours long.

Rather than trying to fillet scenes he should maybe just dump several altogether. Some feel farcically condensed.

Wet-as-a-sponge Ashley Wilkes (Edward Baker-Duly) arrives home from the front for some leave, walks in one door of his house, strolls through the scenery, and vacates by the back door.

�Seems like you just got here,� says his slave, wishing him goodbye. Exit, leave finished. Later, a narrator intones: �And so, 1866 became 1867.� Just like that!

Would that life were so easy, eh, Sir Trevor?

Connoisseurs of big, bad musicals must rush to catch Gone With The Wind in case it�s quickly blown away on gales of ridicule. Or is a small, well-placed tornado in the vicinity of the theatre too much to hope for? I found it a cruel, unusual punishment, being obliged to spend well over three hours watching Jill Paice�s attractive Scarlett O�Hara, parading in big dresses and even bigger displays of petulance. She sang her songs, or rather songlets, in a voice whose higher registers struck fearful sounds. How unfortunate for us that she should endlessly complain about her failure to convince Ashley Wilkes (impressively fraught Edward Baker-Duly) that he was the man for her, rather than Darius Danesh�s caddish smoothie, Rhett Butler.

Meanwhile the firing and destruction of Atlanta, the deaths or disabling of revolting Southern soldiers, proved occasional distraction to the main romantic event � for those of us who like a little light relief from the horrors of unrequited lust. This may sound an ungenerous response to a musical rendition of the 69-year old movie that turned the American Civil war into a seductive weepie and ravished countless millions of women in the process. This version, though, reminds us of the dangers of trying to cram a vintage film spectacular into theatrical confines, particularly with an absolute beginner as the adaptor. Most musicals are the work of several hands and minds. Here, however, book, music and lyrics are all attributed to Margaret Martin, who has spent 30 years taking preg-nancy classes for expectant parents in California, studied musical theory and now gives laborious birth to her first musical.

Martin�s liberal gloss on Gone With The Wind, supplying slaves with some attractive gospel songs and spirituals � �Blacks born to be free�� strikes hypocritical notes, though Natasha Yvette Williams�s black momma sings and acts with appealing ardour. For the musical, like the film, sympathises with Southerners who fight to keep slavery going and launch the Ku Klux Klan. Warfaring incidents serve as mere decorative backdrops,with wounded soldiers staggering ridiculously across the aisles like wounded models on a catwalk. Designer John Napier never attempts to conjure up the multiple locations of Martin�s overstuffed book. Even the firing of Atlanta and its flag looks a smouldering rather than flaming affair. Napier�s wooden, extended stockaded set, decorated with three leafless trees, exudes simple desolation.

Director Trevor Nunn�s Achilles heel is always the length of the heel in question. Having adapted the book he has left it in loquacious long-wind-edness. He unsuccessfully reprises the style of his Royal Shakespeare Company Nicholas Nickleby, making the actors serve as redundant narrators. The songs, brief, frail, tinkling things, sometimes having unusual instrumentation like a harp, often freighted by doggerel lyrics, with bland wisps and slithers of music, pass unremembered. Crucially, Paice�s skittish Scarlett musters no passion for the far from dangerous or demanding Rhett of Danesh, whose beautiful, high vocals are his best feature.

Frankly I do have to give a damn to the whole show.

Pop Idol star Darius Danesh received a standing ovation for his performance as Rhett Butler in the new production of Gone With The Wind.

The 27-year-old Glasgow-born singer stars opposite US performer Jill Paice in the Trevor Nunn show.

A star-studded audience turned out to watch Danesh take on the role made famous by Clark Gable in the 1939 film.

The first preview of the adaptation of the 1936 Margaret Mitchell novel ran to a mammoth four hours.

By the US civil war epic had been cut down to three-and-a-half-hours, including the interval, in time for opening night.

Actresses Joan Collins and Barbara Windsor, broadcaster David Frost, comic and writer Ben Elton, model Twiggy, ex-Blue singer Duncan James and Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Philips turned out to watch the musical adaptation, which cost a reported �4.5m to stage.

Danesh said afterwards: "I had a blast, it was my first opening night and it was great to cut my teeth with the inimitable Trevor Nunn."

Of the length of the production, he said: "We are still shorter than the film."

The production is the first play written by US mother-of-three Margaret Martin, who took the idea to director Nunn after gaining the rights to the story.

Danesh previously played Sky Masterson in Michael Grandage's production of Guys and Dolls and was the youngest actor to play Billy Flynn in Chicago.

Does no one ever learn from the past? An earlier musical of Margaret Mitchell's mammoth novel, having been seen in Tokyo and London, eventually burned out in Atlanta.

Undeterred, theatrical tyro Margaret Martin has written book, music and lyrics for this new version which Trevor Nunn directs; and the result feels like a hectic, strip-cartoon account of a dated pop classic.

The problem is structural: how do you cram a 1,000-page novel into three-and-a-half hours of stage time? The answer is "with great difficulty".

Starting in 1861, the show bustles through 12 years of Scarlett O'Hara's life and American civil war history with such speed that nothing much registers.

At one point, in order to spite her adored Ashley Wilkes, Scarlett marries, is widowed and gives birth to her first child in the space of 40 seconds.

The other key problem is political. Commendably the show seeks to avoid turning into a nostalgic paean, as the Selznick movie does, to old southern values.

Far and away the best moment comes when Mammy, Prissy and all the black slaves who have kept plantation life going join forces to sing "all men fight for freedom from the moment of their birth". This, you realise, is where the real drama lies. Confronted by a movement of history, the story of the wilful Scarlett, of her eventual marriage to the profiteering Rhett Butler and of her long-burning flame for the dithering Ashley seems small beer.

Deep down, I suspect, the show's creator knows this. But she is shackled by the dead conventions of a novel which deploys history as a colourful backdrop to private emotion.

What I crave is less a repeat of Gone With The Wind than a complete reversal of it: one that tells the whole story from the slaves' viewpoint and stresses the fact that large numbers ran away to join the Union armies.

Nunn's production makes tentative steps in this direction by, as in Nicholas Nickleby, splitting the narrative amongst various voices, including the black characters. But, like Martin, he is tethered to his source and forced to follow the tedious ups and downs of the privileged white southerners. To those who see Scarlett as a feminist role model, I can only say that heartless opportunism and emotional blindness don't strike me as the most attractive qualities; but Jill Paice does an excellent job of reconciling us to one of literature's least beguiling protagonists. Darius Danesh also endows the morally dubious Rhett Butler with a graceful virility and residual guilt. But the most engaging performances come from Natasha Yvette Williams as the stoically enduring Mammy and from Jina Burrows as the flighty Prissy, both obliged to serve the self-regarding Scarlett. The rest of the vast cast spend much of the evening hurtling round the balconies of John Napier's circumambient, Nickleby-style set, substituting energy for detailed exploration of character. But there is something extravagantly pointless about the whole enterprise.

Why revive a novel that, for all the liberal exertions of Martin and Nunn, obstinately views history through the wrong end of a telescope?

Charles Spencer reviews Gone with the Wind at the New London Theatre Video: Gone with the Wind

The vultures have been circling over this show for weeks. There have been cancelled previews, reports that it was so long that audiences were missing the last train home, and of people physically collapsing in the foyer through sheer exhaustion.

No fire: Jill Paice (Scarlett O�Hara) and Darius Danesh (Rhett Butler) have little sexual chemistry Actually I made that last bit up. But I have to say that when I emerged from the theatre after three hours and 40 minutes, it felt as if I had spent several years watching Gone with the Wind and that I had probably missed not just the Beijing Olympics but the London games planned for 2012 as well.

But there is a puzzle here. Three hours and 40 minutes isn't actually that long for Gone with the Wind, particularly when umpteen songs have been added to what is coyly described as a "play with music" rather than a full-blown musical. Margaret Mitchell's novel, published in 1936, runs to almost 1,000 pages and the justly celebrated movie, with its matchless performances from Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, lasted longer than this stage version.

In fact, Trevor Nunn's production achieves the kind of paradox normally only found in the baffling field of quantum mechanics. It feels interminable, but moment by moment it also seems ridiculously rushed, so that incidents that really make a mark in the film go for almost nothing on stage. advertisement

Never mind "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", this soullessly efficient show merely feels like one damn thing after another, an endless parade of unexciting incidents that leaves the viewer feeling neither shaken nor stirred.

As in Nunn's famous production of Nicholas Nickleby, the large ensemble combines dialogue with passages of narration from the novel. The songs seem constantly to interrupt the proceedings rather than deepening or advancing the narrative. This is a first attempt at a musical by Margaret Martin, an American doctor, and though Nunn has adapted her book and lyrics, he can't disguise the fact that killer tunes are in short supply. In fact there is only one of them, a knock-out gospel number for the slaves that makes everything else in the show seem paltry.

By the time we had reached the second half I felt like screaming every time a new song started - one knew by then it would be lacklustre and slow the flagging action down still further. The lyrics are for the most part trite. "I'm the queen of the county/The belle of the ball/But like Humpty Dumpty/ I had a great fall," chirrups Scarlett, and one fervently wishes she hadn't.

The biggest disappointment is how dreary and unspectacular it all proves. John Napier's wooden design does almost nothing to capture the visual glory of the American South, and the burning of Atlanta is a pathetic anti-climax, just a lot of smoke and orange lights and a barely smouldering Confederate flag.

Nor does Nunn seem to have anything new to add. It might have been wise, for instance, to show the terrible conditions endured by slaves not owned by the kindly O'Hara family, but their depiction is every bit as patronising and sanitised as in the film. Nor is there any attempt to explore the vile attitudes of Ku Klux Klan.

Combustible sexual chemistry between Scarlett and Rhett might just have saved the evening, but it never ignites. Jill Paice is pert, pretty and full of pep, but she misses the viciousness and eroticism the role also demands. Darius Danesh, meanwhile, seems to be giving a stilted impersonation of Clark Gable rather than supplying anything original of his own.

The only performer who really lights up the stage is Natasha Yvette Williams as a huge-busted, full-hearted Mammy, who rips into the show's one decent number and has all the presence, good humour and heart the rest of the show so dismally lacks.

The only people likely to give a damn about this Gone with the Wind are the investors, who risk losing their shirts.

London Winds of change resurrect some Southern comforts
By Paul Taylor
Wednesday, 23 April 2008

You don't have to wait long for the line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" in this new stage musical version of Gone With The Wind. You can read it, as you enter, emblazoned on the T-shirts and mugs at the merchandise stall. There are also aprons for sale that assert that "I'll never be hungry again".

It's an index of the huge popularity of the 1939 film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's novel that these phrases are etched on the collective consciousness and it's also a measure of what this musical has to live up to in attempting to tell the story in a different way.

Trevor Nunn's production is the most anticipated tuner of the season but the word from the previews was worrying, with rumours of excessive length. Now trimmed to a not exactly terse three hours 40 minutes, the show is neither as bad as one feared nor as good as one has a right to expect.

In opening out this saga of cross-purpose love, set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, the most prominent innovation is the treatment of the black community who are here granted what they were there denied: a dignified, independent voice. The racism of the South is fully acknowledged. One great benefit is that the score is enriched with spirituals, blues and gospel music, spine-tinglingly well-sung by such cast members as Natasha Yvette Williams's loveably sassy Mammy and Jina Burrows' Prissy. But the drawback is that the well-intentioned liberal revisionism too often feels grafted-on apologetically. Once freed, the hapless Prissy has a sudden, unconvincing personality rethink and belts out her determination to learn to read and become a teacher. A dispute about responses to post-bellum whites is evasively resolved in a great whoosh of uplift in the anthem declaring that "if we close our hearts to hatred/And we open them to love/Hope will follow on the wings of a dove". The rest of the score ranges from soppy, forgettable love songs to would-be witty, forgettable patter numbers to forgettable Irish airs about the Importance of the Land to... I forget.

The story, perforce often rattled-through and perfunctory, has to rely heavily on spoken narration from figures stationed on the picket fence balcony that surrounds the curved wooden acting arena in John Napier's "environmental" design.

I never thought that I'd pine for projections in a stage show but the far from awe-inspiring flash-bangs and set-collapses that evoke the burning of Atlanta; the distinctly under-populated spectacle of the Confederate dead; and the excitement-free rotating-wagon escape to Tara leave the hackneyed theatrical language of mimed horses and props looking in need of further support to register the requisite texture, tension and atmosphere.

The diabolically dashing Darius Danesh (of Pop Idol fame) brings a seductively insolent charm, a dark velvet voice and a genuine, fugitive pathos to the cynical blockade runner.

If Jill Paice hasn't quite nailed the comic, outrageously feline wiliness of Scarlett, she boasts the bright, soaring vocal quality to convey the heroine's indomitable survivor's drive. The two performers are at their moving best when towards the end, each lost in their separate loneliness, they engage in an unconscious duet of marriage misery.

All the same, I was left wondering whether, on the whole, this quixotic enterprise takes us any deeper into the inner life of Gone With The Wind.

The irony is that it's Max Steiner's superb score for the movie version, with its character motifs and achingly interwoven period tunes, that offers the true object lesson in how to use music dramatically.

It doesn't get much braver than this: an attempt to recreate David O Selznick�s 1939 epic film, Gone with the Wind, as a 3�-hour musical on the stage. The stakes at the New London Theatre on Drury Lane are high: the many passionate fans of the film, and Margaret Mitchell�s original novel, are likely to be merciless in their appraisals of the stage version.

Cinema is at once an intimate and grand medium. The camera could depict the burning of Atlanta in all its terrible majesty, and then dip in to catch a sly, sidelong glance from Vivien Leigh�s emerald eyes as she transmitted the delicious selfishness of the restless Southern belle, Scarlett O�Hara, to the wider world.

Such realism is not available to Trevor Nunn, the director of the musical: he must make do with a range of alternative devices, from narrators poised on the balcony to imaginary props mimed by hard-working actors, in order to keep this tumultuous, complicated story on the road.

The towering drama of Gone with the Wind, of course, has been often and fondly parodied, and I found myself almost expecting French and Saunders to bowl up in crinolines. The racial politics of the antebellum South, too, are still capable of causing a frisson of discomfort on a preview night in London, as when the black slaves discuss conditions on Gerald O�Hara�s plantation: �He treats his darkies right,� says Mammy, the beloved black housekeeper, played by Natasha Yvette Williams, even as that possessive pronoun sticks sharply in the craw of a modern multiracial audience.

Although Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in the film, was the first black American to win an Oscar, the film came under attack in later years for its perceived caricaturing of black slaves, in particular the light-headed servant Prissy, played by Butterfly McQueen. Malcolm X, the black activist, later wrote: �I was the only Negro in the [film] theatre, and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act I felt like crawling under the rug.�

To be fair to Nunn�s musical, he neither shirks the complexities of racism in the story nor allows them to dominate. The black members of the cast have a noticeably stronger and more dignified voice than they had in the film, but then one might expect attitudes to have moved on a little since 1939.

The songs do not have unforgettable melodies but they are diverting and engaging: still, perhaps they should think again before allowing Melanie, the saintly wife of Ashley Wilkes, to burst into song on her deathbed.

Sometimes, the stage make-believe that fills in for complicated film set works beautifully, as it does during the tragic death of Rhett Butler and Scarlett�s daughter, Bonnie. At other moments, we would have been better off with sound alone or silhouettes glimpsed behind a screen: Melanie�s desperate childbirth, with only Scarlett in attendance, is not improved by the emergence of a symbolic infant that closely resembles a cloth doll.

The great draw for any theatre crowd, however, remains the romance between Rhett and Scarlett, as enduring a literary couple in their own way as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. The physical presences of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable in the roles are so firmly etched on the collective consciousness that it would be folly indeed to attempt to erase them. Wisely, Nunn does not try.

Jill Paice, as Scarlett, has Leigh�s delicately feline bone structure, a waist as tiny as her voice is big, and a gruelling live performance to carry off. I wished at the start that she would relax and set the b*tchy, witty, ruthlessly flirtatious Scarlett free to strut the stage, but these are early days and, by the second half, she hits her stride.

The surprise of the show, however, is Darius Danesh, a Glaswegian who came to popular attention as a losing contestant on Pop Idol, the television talent show, but who plays Rhett with a masterly combination of dash and pathos.

Thank God they�ve got Rhett right, I thought. You don�t mess with him: it is the prospect of darkly roguish Rhett, the blast of pure masculine force, that will have the ladies urgently booking tickets for themselves and their friends. No woman who watches Selznick�s film has ever really seen the point of Ashley, the drippy blond for whom Scarlett carries a torch even after the South turns to ash.

The crowd at Drury Lane seemed stoic about the length of the production, although there was a bad-mannered taxi dash from a significant minority even before the cast had taken their bows.

The pace and slickness of the musical will, it is hoped, be tightened up, like one of Scarlett�s celebrated corsets, before the official opening. But by the time the curtain fell this gargantuan story had none the less worked its mysterious magic.

One is condemned to begin by sniggering a little at Gone with the Wind, and end by crying. Just at the point where Rhett said, �Frankly, my dear, I don�t give a damn� � the famous words echoed faithfully by the expectant audience � I suddenly found that I did.