Hex Review: ‘The year’s biggest turkey, it is overcooked and overstuffed’

This time last year it felt like Hex was cursed. The brand-new musical take on Sleeping Beauty started previews at the National Theatre in early December and was scheduled to open on 15 December. But the bah-humbug pandemic soon put paid to that, forcing press night to be postponed then cancelled along with many performances, making the show’s stop-start run one long preview with no official start date.

Cut to Christmas 2022 and Hex is back – roused from its slumber to bring, in theory at least, some fairy tale enchantment to the Olivier stage, even if my own bout with Covid a year after it felled some cast and crew meant I couldn’t make a press night that’s been a long time coming.

Fully recovered, I finally ventured to the National wondering ‘Has it been worth the wait?’ and came away, two and a half hours later, thinking ‘Sorry but no’.

The year’s biggest turkey, it is overcooked and overstuffed. It looks lovely, thanks to Katrina Lindsay’s gorgeous set and costume design, but it leaves a bad aftertaste and you wonder how the cooks in the kitchen ever thought it was fit for serving.

It’s a family show that’s also something of a family affair. The National’s Artistic Director Rufus Norris directs it himself and provides the lyrics (the music is by Jim Fortune) while his wife Tanya Ronder wrote the script.

Ronder’s riff on the Charles Perrault fairy tale features a fairy called Fairy, who accidentally puts a spell on bawling baby princess Rose when the latter’s worn-out mum asks her to knock Rose out for a while so Mummy can get some sleep.

Thus begins a tiresome quest for Fairy to right the wrong in a musical that features Prince Charmings aplenty (although why they all have yellow hair is a mystery to me), an ogress named Queenie with a taste for baby flesh, and a love story between a revived Rose and a prince named Bert that ties it all together but doesn’t engage.

Ronder’s writing feels like it’s striving to say something profound (about parenting, perhaps, or unconditional love) without ever managing to do so. There’s also a dark undercurrent that will unnerve younger audience members and an unevenness of tone that will baffle everyone else, as will the fact that Fairy balks at baking babies but has no compunction when it comes to slaughtering animals.

As spectacles go it’s something else and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt, so good in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella, steals it as the purple peril Queenie. Hats off, too, to Lisa Lambe as Fairy, who gets the best songs and belts them out accordingly.

Their performances and the stunning visuals save Hex from being a one-star disaster but the music is dreary, the lyrics tortuous (Sondheim would be cringing at such clumsy stabs at cleverness) and the script as sour as gone-off sprouts. The curse has not been lifted.

Rating: 2/5

Hex is at the National Theatre, London, until 14 January. Get tickets here.