Despite the fact that it flopped at its 1956 premiere, in the history of musicals there has scarcely been a bolder, wittier or more majestically operatic score than Leonard Bernstein's for his unwieldy Candide.  For that reason alone, everyone from Lillian Hellman to John Wells and Jonathan Miller by way of Dorothy Parker and Stephen Sondheim (and plenty more) has tried to turn this extravagant but famously intractable musical dramatisation of Voltaire intoviable theatre.  A significant body of opinion believes that the show is best realised on disc.

Thus we can only applaud the spirit of endeavour behind the decision to try to come up with a new theatrical solution to the problem in the shape of yet another version, this time for the National Theatre, with a "new" book, written and directed by John Caird, assisted by Trevor Nunn.

Bernstein recorded his score with a heavy-duty operatic cast and the London Symphony Orchestra, so when the National's thin-sounding 14-piece band strikes up the famous overture your spirits sink.  Musically, matters improve significantly but even at the start there's a bonus in the dominating presence of Simon Russell Beale as the narrator, Voltaire.  Caught in the spotlight in the centre of the vast, bare Olivier stage, he beadily eyeballs the entire audience with invincible imperiousness.  Voltaire now has a larger slice of the action, guiding you through Candide's labyrinthine physical and philosophical journey from naive optimism to true enlightenment, and whenever Russell Beale is in charge you feel unusually connected to the action.  But even the strength of this new thread cannot bind the show together into a satisfying whole. 

John Napier's spare designs — little more than a cunningly deployed set of packing cases — throw the focus on to the actors.  The National' s ensemble company uses Nicholas Nickleby-style storytelling techniques to whip up different atmospheres inlocations across Europe, from drowning at sea to a grand ball in Venice, with gusts of smoke to enhance Paul Pyant's lighting.

Beverley Klein brings the house down as the ill-used Old Lady.  She grabs her big scene where she lists suffering every indignity known to womankind — she's been left with one buttock (don't ask) — with tremendously engaging zest, before going one further by launching into a splendidly assured and terrifically funny rendition of "I Am Easily Assimilated". Similarly, Simon Day's ludicrously tall and pompous Maximilian seizes his comedy with delicious aplomb.

Yet the musical and dramatic power of these performances — and that of Denis Quilley as Martin, who refuses to believe in the goodness of mankind — also highlights the fundamental weakness.  Not for nothing is this known as Bernstein's Candide.  Goodacting is not enough.  The overall feeling generated is that of a very long story with an outstanding, but separate, score.  The approach is typified by Daniel Evans as a nicely boyish Candide.  His sweet voice is simply too light to carry the emotional intensity of the music.  Similarly, Peter Darling's choreography is often imaginative but you keep wishing it would lift the temperature to another level to drive the musical motor.

All the stops are pulled out for the hair-raising choral finale, but by then it's too late.  Caird's version is more faithful to Voltaire's ideas and has impressive clarity, but the plodding rhythm of his production means that it fails to take fire.  Ultimately, it's caught between stools.  In terms of music and its dramatic sincerity, Candide is now a chamber piece.  But stranded in the Olivier the drama deflates.  It would make for economic madness, but I wonder what it would be like in the Cottesloe?

Leonard Bernstein's Candide began life in 1956 with a sparkling score and (by all accounts) a disastrous book.  Since then it has undergone so much surgery that it has scarcely been out of hospital: it has been tinkered with, rewritten, expanded, made over by various hands.  The latest production, at the Olivier Theatre, has been substantially reshaped by the director, John Caird, and establishing its exact relation to previous versions will no doubt keep Bernstein scholars busy for some time.  But in the theatre, all that matters about a production is whether it works — and this one is a huge success. 

Caird's first shrewd move is to put Voltaire back at the centre of things.  Literally, to start with: the show opens with the stage in complete darkness apart from a spotlight trained on his features, or rather those of the actor who plays him, Simon Russell Beale.  We have no alternative but to study them while the overture runs its course. 

It would be a risky procedure if Russell Beale didn't have such an interesting face.  He may not be as lean and wrinkled as Voltaire was, but in other respects you feel that there is something thoroughly Voltairean about his beady eye, his pursed lips, the half-smile that would almost suggest cynical satisfaction at the prospect of so much folly if there weren't a dry compassion discernible in it as well. 

When the action proper begins, he promptly steps into the role of puppet-master, manipulating his marionettes.  That conceit soon fades, as the characters take on a life of their own; but he continues to weave his way through the story as narrator — except in those scenes where he whips out a pair of glasses and transforms himself into the ever-optimistic Dr Pangloss instead. 

One of his functions is to narrate in the most obvious sense of the term, to help bring out the strengths of what is, apart from its other merits, an excellent picaresque tale.  But he also ensures that we don't lose sight of the underlying philosophical issues, the questions about justice, suffering and freedom which — transposed to another key — wouldn't be out of place in the Book of Job. 

All this in a musical?  Yes — though I have also seen Candide described, perhaps more accurately, as an opera-bouffe.  In any event, the mix is a difficult one to get right.  It is both a serious show and a light one — a good deal lighter than, shall we say, Miss Saigon or Whistle Down the Wind.  The trick is not to tilt too far in either direction. 

It is one thing to have a balanced approach, as Caird does, another to make it work.  If he succeeds, it is through the brilliance of his staging — with the assistance, we are told in the programme, of Trevor Nunn.  (There was a song at the end of the last war, supposedly sung by a demobilised sailor, entitled "I've Got My Captain Working for Me Now".)

Everything conspires to bring out both the wit and the drama: the fluid ensemble effects, the dynamic choreography (by Peter Darling), the bold visual tricks that the designer, John Napier, plays with relatively simple props.  And there is a series of splendid performances — splendidly acted, and splendidly sung. 

Pride of place, along with Russell Beale, must go to Daniel Evans as the hero.  In many respects, he has the most difficult task of all: a character as naive as Candide can easily come across as merely goofy.  But with Evans, you feel the goodwill counts for more than the naivety: there is the touch of primal innocence that makes Voltaire's fable itself more complicated, even more optimistic, than it at first appears. 

With Evans, who has already made his mark playing Peter Pan, you might say a star is confirmed.  In the case of Alex Kelly, who plays Cunegonde, a star is born: she is dazzling in the mock-operatic jewel song, "Glitter and Be Gay", and delightful elsewhere.  For the rest, it is hard to choose; but there are notable contributions from Clive Rowe (a faithful servant), Simon Day (an ultra-snobbish aristo) and Denis Quilley (a Pangloss in reverse), and an irresistible one from Beverley Klein as the old lady who soldiers on defiantly in spite of the loss of a buttock — no laughing matter — and much else. 

The new National Theatre production of Leonard Bernstein's Candide is reviewed elsewhere in these pages as theatre — which is only right for an adaptation (by director John Caird) which has specifically turned the piece into a "play with music".  But Candide has had as many lives as it has had librettists.  As some of these lives are operatic, it's appropriate to use this space to say how wonderfully successful, on the whole, this adaptation is. 

The problem with Candide has always been its crazy, sequential structure, which provides no real dramatic shape in scenes that mark time through a random journey.  As successive generations of "collaborators" have moved in on the piece over some 40 years, so it has grown and shrunk, shape-shifting between music-theatre, cabaret and opera.  Ten years ago at Scottish Opera, in a production by Jonathan Miller, it seemed to settle into some kind of finality.  That was the version on which Bernstein based his unforgettable Barbican concert performances with the LSO — recorded by Deutsche Grammophon — and the best fun I've ever had, legitimately, in a concert hall.  Christa Ludwig sang the Old Lady, Nicolai Gedda the Governor.  Jerry Hadley was Candide, June Anderson (who could still sing then) Cunegonde. 

At the National, things aren't so grand.  No LSO, no grandi voci.  There's just a small stage-band that will sound thin to anyone who knows the piece "symphonically", particularly in the overture where Caird offers no visual distraction beyond the ruminating figure of Voltaire (a mistake).  For five long minutes you fear the worst. 

What follows, though, is theatre of such brilliance and vitality that nothing seems amiss at all.  The extra text (Caird has gone back to Voltaire) skips by with actors rather than opera singers to deliver it.  And there's very little in the reassembly of the piece that isn't for the better   including a more substantial introduction to the Old Lady before she throws herself into her big number, and a shift in placement of the Kings' scene so that it supplies the motivation for Candide to cultivate his garden.  Best of all, the role of Martin (played by Denis Quilley) is enlarged into a proper foil for Pangloss.  Forty years ago, when Quilley took the title role in the first ever UK staging of Candide, there was no Martin to enlarge.  He didn't feature as a character. 

Perhaps because it concerns "the best of all possible worlds" (or lack thereof), Leonard Bernstein's Candide continues to be thought of as the best of all possible shows.  That appraisal is most frequently made by those who primarily know the score, a continually elegant and witty pastiche at home both in the opera house (where it was premiered in 1982) and in the knockabout environmental milieu of Harold Prince's celebrated trimmed-down version from the previous decade.  In virtually any context, including adapter-director John Caird's scrupulous though ultimately unsatisfying new version for the Royal National Theater, that score wounds and amuses and even heals, even if — in 1999 — "Make Our Garden Grow" emerges not so much as an accommodation with society as a kind of new-age withdrawal from it: less the middle way than an abdication of social responsibility. 

But there's another Candide, as well, and it is that one which confounds Caird as it has stymied the extraordinary array of collaborators — Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, and Stephen Sondheim included — who for over 40 years have struggled to give coherent voice and shape to Voltaire's Enlightenment-era template.  (Even here, Sondheim and lead lyricist Richard Wilbur have provided new words for three numbers between them.)

A picaresque musical that wears its moral on its sleeve, Candide in performance can be as wearing as the long, hard slog made by the fresh-faced Westphalian hero (played by Daniel Evans) on the global journey toward his own hard won enlightenment.  And if the musical's willingness to confront such issues as mass slaughter, devastation and plunder tallies all too tragically with the end of our wrung-out century, there's no escaping the abiding glibness of a show that is ironic and flip one minute, sententious the next. 

All the hard work of Caird and some talented collaborators (the wonderful Simon Russell Beale in his debut as a musical star among them) can't disguise the fact that the show is as confused as its ever-optimistic title character, who is forced to spend most of the evening in a state of suspended (and vocally clipped) surprise. 

One can certainly see the appeal for the National of this musical as the sort of flawed yet patchily stunning nearmiss that the state-funded theater exists to support and to develop further.  (Its classical pedigree doesn't hurt, either.)  Less anticipated is the way in which Candide chimes so neatly with Troilus and Cressida, its predecessor in the NT's six-show lineup of works all performed by much the same ensemble.  (Next up: Edward Bulwer-Lytton's little-known 1840 play, Money, also starring Russell Beale.)  Like Troilus, Candide sets a young pair of lovers against a bruising and lecherous world, with Caird's flesh version of the Hugh Wheeler book featuring its own Thersites equivalent in Denis Quilley's strongly played Martin, the voice of a pessimism verging on nihilism — the word "good" isn't in his lexicon — that darkens what jauntiness the musical elsewhere strains to convey. 

Caird's sweeping changes range from the sizable to the incidental.  A droll joke at the (unnamed) expense of Damien Hirst — the Brit-art bad boy of pickled animal parts renown — may go unremarked by many, though few will fail to sit up during the overture, as Russell Beale makes his entrance through the auditorium to take his position center-stage as a spotlit Voltaire.  The suggestion is that the show to follow is all pouring forth from its satirical creator, which is true to the extent that no previous Candide has featured so much Voltaire. 

And while the actor has great fun with some of the story's names (his delivery of the alliterative Thunder-Ten-Tronck constitutes a comic master class all its own), his doubling as Pangloss becomes the invaluable anchor to that rare musical that may suffer from a case of too much smarts.  The collective intelligence brought to bear over time on Candide has drained it of any spontaneous emotional life. 

One certainly can't fault Caird for trying, especially as assisted by his Les Miz colleague Trevor Nunn in a semi-environmental staging (late on, some exhausted "sheep" turn up at the rear of the theater) that recalls the same directors' work on Nicholas Nickleby extensive use of mime and minimal props included.  In contrast to this show's short-lived 1997 Broadway revival, John Napier's minimally embellished disc of a set throws the emphasis back on the performers, who range from the hammy (Beverley Klein's Old Woman, she of the lone buttock) to the hilarious (Simon Day's puffed-up — and gay — Maximilian).  Alex Kelly's confidently sung Cunegonde isn't the only performer who might be better served by Bruce Coughlin's orchestrations if music director Mark W. Dorrell's 14-piece band had not been rather tinnily obscured at the back of the Olivier thrust stage. 

What cannot be obscured are the mixed fortunes of a show that dazzles one minute (how many musicals rhyme "spirochete" with "eat"?) and ambles dully along the next, so that you find yourself ticking off destinations while you wait for Candide to get to his fabled garden.  "We must all of us work," he says upon arrival, sounding as if Peter Pan (Evans' former role in the same auditorium) had flown into a play by Chekhov.  And yet all the bestintentioned work in the world can't dispel the seemingly immutable truth that Candide for all its musical glories, proves a mighty long row to hoe.

The National Theatre's triumphant new ensemble has moved rapidly from Troilus and Cressida to Candide on the Olivier stage and, if anything, with still greater success.

For more than 40 years, this has been a work in progress.  Leonard Bernstein's score opens with what is unquestionably the greatest overture in the whole history of the American musical, but the show's problems have always started from there.

The original idea may have seemed simple enough: a sing-along version of the Voltaire peripatetic classic starring its title character and, as narrator, its maddeningly optimistic philosopher, Dr. Pangloss.  Yet, going right back to 1956 (the musical's birth coincides with that of Bernstein's West Side Story, and at least one song destined for the former ended up in the latter), half a dozen of America's greatest writers have been defeated by it.  Credits feature such diverse talents as Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, the U.S. poet laureate Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, the playwright Hugh Wheeler and the lyricist John la Touche.  Such innovative directors as Tyrone Guthrie and Hal Prince have tried to make sense of it, as did John Mauceri and John Wells for the Scottish Opera.

But now, at long last, we have it as right as we are ever likely to get it.  Sure it's still overlong, rambling, circuitous and ultimately kind of a shambles, but the genius of this staging takes our minds off that unhappy truth with a series of dazzling moments none of which depend on technical wizardry or expensive props and costumes.

We open on a bare stage with Simon Russell Beale, in a great musical debut as Pangloss, seated astride an actors' trunk listening (in the only big mistake of the evening) to that overture, one that we need to be able to hear without the distraction of someone trying to respond to its many moods with a series of facial grimaces.  Beale is soon joined by a Commedia dell'Arte troupe that proceeds to play all the characters of the evening, while he doubles Voltaire and Pangloss as our guide through Voltaire's labyrinthine travelogue of the mind.

As a team of directors, John Caird and Trevor Nunn have always been at their best translating to the footlights an apparently unwieldy and unstagable novel, be it Nicholas Nickleby or Les Miserables, with a permanent and classical company at full stretch and in full cry.  That is precisely what we have here.  Like the often underrated Man of La Mancha, Candide is a "quest," and it is only when we realize that the journey, rather than the arrival, is its reason for existence that we can appreciate its genius.  The success here has a lot to do with the confidence of a new National company.  Candide may be Voltaire rather than Shakespeare, but it is no less of a challenge than Troilus in its sprawling, cynical, circus-like style.  Of the first disastrous production in 1956, a 25-year-old Sondheim noted, "Hellman wrote a black comedy, Lennie wrote a pastiche score and then Guthrie directed it like a wedding cake."  The genius of this revival is to embrace all those apparent contradictions, and then find a style of its own that would solve nearly all the problems of an imperfect musical about an imperfect world.

All for the best in the best of all possible worlds: the National Theatre's triumphant new ensemble moves rapidly from Troilus and Cressida to Candide on the open Olivier stage and, if anything, with still greater success.  For more than 40 years, this has been a work in progress; Leonard Bernstein's score opens with what is unquestionably the greatest Overture in the whole history of the American musical, but its problems have always started from there.

The original idea may have seemed simple enough, a singalong version of the Voltaire peripatetic classic starring its title character and, as narrator, its maddeningly optimistic philosopher Dr. Pangloss.  Yet, going right back to 1956 (the musical's birth coincides with that of the same composer's West Side Story, and at least one song destined for the former ended up in the latter), fully half a dozen of America's greatest writers have been defeated by it.  Credits thus now feature such diverse talents as those of Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, the American poet laureate Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, playwright Hugh Wheeler and lyricist John LaTouche.  Legendary and innovative directors from Tyrone Guthrie to Hal Prince have tried to make sense of it, as did John Mauceri and the late John Wells more recently for Scottish Opera.  New York alone has seen at least five major revivals, one as recently as last year with Jim Dale, and all of them have died a variety of commercial and artistic deaths.

But now, at long, long last, we have it as damn near right as we are ever likely to get it; sure it is still overlong, rambling, circuitous and ultimately kind of a shambles, something akin to Peer Gynt performed underwater, but the genius of the current staging is to take all our minds off that unhappy truth with a series of dazzling stage moments none of which depends on technical wizardry or expensive props and costumes.

We open on a bare stage with Simon Russell Beale, in a dazzling musical debut as Pangloss, seated astride an actor's trunk listening, in the only major mistake of the evening, to the aforementioned Overture, one that we need to be able to hear without the distraction of an actor trying to respond to its many moods by a series of facial grimaces.  From then on things can only get better, and believe me they do; Beale is rapidly joined by a Commedia dell'Arte troupe who proceed to play all the characters of the evening while, never offstage, he himself doubles Voltaire and Pangloss as our guide through Voltaire's labrynthine travelogue of the mind.

As a team of directors, John Caird (who here takes precedence) and Trevor Nunn have always been at their best translating an apparently unwieldy and unstageable novel, be it Nicholas Nickleby or Les Miserables, to the footlights with a permanent and classical company at full stretch and in full cry, and that is precisely what we have here.  There are some nicely self-referential touches (Denis Quilley, the original London Candide back in 1958, is now the old curmudgeon Martin), and, although the present hero, Daniel Evans, is a little too eager to reprise his recent National Peter Pan opposite a hopelessly uncharismatic Cunegonde from Alex Kelly, the character-playing of their elders and betters is just magical, not least from Quilley, Alexander Hanson, David Burt and, as the old woman with one buttock, Beverley Klein.  One buttock?  As they say or rather sing in the show, don't ask.

A show that has only ever nearly worked is infinitely more fascinating to consider than one which has never failed, which is why I regard this Candide as a far greater triumph of rediscovery and reconsideration and revival than Nunn's recent National Oklahoma!; it is precisely because of its apparent faults, and the room therefore to let for improvements, that Candide remains so tantalising and elusive, lingering in the mind and the musical memory long after better-rounded and more complete scores have faded.

Like the often underrated Man of La Mancha, Candide is a "quest" musical, and it is only when we realise the journey, rather than the arrival, is its whole reason for theatrical existence that we can at long, long last appreciate its wayward genius.  It is not often, after all, that Broadway heroes get spit-roasted by savages, or come to final recognition that the life of a world traveller is never going to be as exciting as doing a little backyard gardening, though in that context you might just be able to cite Voltaire as one of the starting points for Wizard of Oz.  But the wizardry here has a lot to do with the confidence of a new National company, taking to the open stage as if they have worked there forever; Candide may be Voltaire rather than Shakespeare, but it is no less of a challenge than Troilus in its sprawling, cynical, circus-like style.  Of the first disastrous production in 1956, a then 25-year-old Sondheim noted that "Hellman wrote a black comedy, Lennie wrote a pastiche score, and then Guthrie directed it like a wedding cake".  The genius of the current revival is to embrace all those apparent contradictions in the show, and then find a style of its own that would solve nearly all the problems of an imperfect musical about an imperfect world.

Bernstein's Candide, if indeed the comic opera or operetta or musical comedy at the Olivier Theatre is primarily to be credited to him, has finally, after over 40 years, worked its way through to success, artistic as well as commercial.  To a considerable degree that has been a matter of getting the work that he and a battalion of collaborators on the lyrics wrestled to form back to Voltaire.  The spirit rather than the letter was what the show had always managed to avoid, but now, thanks to John Caird's new version, we have a remarkable amount of both. 

I re-read the novel just before seeing the show and was amazed at the proportion of it that managed to get in, given that it is the most hectically picaresque ever composed.  Caird has daringly put the narrative flow first, as Voltaire did, and made the characters into no more than hapless corks bobbing on the fast-flowing current.  That probably goes against Bernstein's impulses, since among other things he was, in the original version, making a plea for the individual against the intrusive state.  But Candide was never the opera to use for that purpose, and it is lucky that Bernstein was simultaneously working on West Side Story, some of whose sickly songs were first planned for Candide.  The whole I-embrace-the-world side of Lennie, so insidious an element in almost all his work as composer and conductor, meant that he always had to have on hand works by himself or by others which he could distend to cope with his need to show how much he could love if only he was loved back.  So long as that side of him was regularly requited, he could get on with being the witty, streetwise, acrid purveyor of unillusioned accounts of what life is actually like. 

In no other extended work does he succeed so continuously as in Candide, the cool savagery of which he found just as congenial, and for the same reasons, as Mahler's vicious scherzos.  Or rather, it can succeed so long as it is rescued as resourcefully as it is at the Olivier.  Huge quantities of Voltaire having been reinstated, a large proportion of them is handed to Simon Russell Beale, one of the most gifted actors of our time, and ideal doubling as the novelist and as Pangloss.  Confident, supercilious, a tireless spectator and resilient participant, letting us see that he cares for others slightly more than he officially wants us to think, he spans perfectly the territory that separates Voltaire from Pangloss.  For much of the interest in the novel, and thus in this phenomenally faithful adaptation of it, comes from the contrast between Voltaire's disdain for shallow optimism and the vitality of his narrative, as reflected in the indestructibility of his characters.  How could one not be an optimist if, like all the major figures in the story, one suffers many fatal wounds and accidents, yet always lives to tell the tale?  Any attack on optimism is suspect, since the mere fact of its possibility shows that things aren't too bad; but an attack as exuberant as Voltaire's (or for that matter Schoepenhauer's) is evidently self-refuting. 

What Bernstein does, in this version, as distinct from his own, on video and CD, which is disastrously slow and solemn, is to use music to economical but decisive effect by employing it only when the intensity of the action demands it.  So the pace of events, and the wit with which Beale narrates them, moves into the songs and concerted numbers as it does in Rossini's operas, to expend the energies and anxieties that have been building up, and to make us uneasy as to whether they are being made worse or being dissolved by this new, added source of energy.  If the music were of a serious or obviously consolatory kind, it would short-circuit the movement of the plot, which is to a large extent independent of what particular events are occurring within it. 

The brilliant overture already alerts us to the sovereignty of verve, and all the best numbers in the score carry on its message of vitality as the most important of qualities.  In this sense Candide is a kind of anti-opera, since in the great tradition of the genre things can be brought to a standstill while the music has its say.  Bernstein brings his opera to a standstill only once, and that is at the end, where he simply cannot resist letting his big heart have its say, with the only grand number, "Make Our Garden Grow", which, as Humphrey Burton writes in his illuminating notes, is "incurably optimistic" and "undermines Voltaire's essential scepticism".  As I have argued, Voltaire and Bernstein are optimistic even in their scepticism; what is distasteful about this kitschy closing chorus is that it returns us to a sticky optimism and seems absent-mindedly to overlook what the rest of the opera has been telling us. 

Otherwise the only fall from grace is the Old Woman's long autobiographical piece, again a lapse into bogus seriousness.  And alone among the performers Beverley Klein seems to have strayed in from another show.  The hero and heroine are, as they ought to be, actors with serviceable voices, no more.  The 14-piece orchestra under Mark Dorrell has just the lack of weight needed.  The pace and immaculate timing of every item in the performance come as a revelation to someone who spends his time attending traditional operatic productions, and led me to reflect on how much more I would enjoy myself if these standards prevailed in opera houses too. 

Candidly, all is for the best in the best of all possible shows.  What with Kosovo and the daily tales of utter horror and widespread human misery, the very idea of musical theatre seems trivial and stupid.  But no revival in London is better timed than this, Leonard Bernstein's flawed but masterful musical based on Voltaire's Candide.  It is a biting satire on the daft philosophy of his day that ignored human evil and argued all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds. . .  The linking of the Broadway show score (however brilliant) to a landmark of European literature is a bit weird — and the effort to make it work meant the show has more credits than a Bond film. . .  True, it's a strange beast.  But it's a fabulous one too.  The evening was held together by Simon Russell Beale, blissfully funny as both Voltaire (who narrates) and Pangloss, the optimistic buffoon, who is tutor to the sweet natured Candide, played by Daniel Evans.  The free-wheeling staging is a joy, giving Voltaire's political incorrectness plenty of profile.  — from The Express

Candide has had a history as complex as the tale its original Voltaire novel tells.nbsp; Its troubled original Broadway run was in 1956, and it's seen no less than seven reworkings by composer Leonard Bernstein and various writers, including Hugh Wheeler, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Stephen Sondheim.  Finally, the Royal National Theatre has stripped away the extra layers of labored text, extravagant scenery, and plot-halting numbers to reveal a glistening jewel.  In a new rewrite by director John Caird and lyricist Richard Wilbur, Candide opens with one large black trunk onstage.  Quickly, characters extract a smaller one, then a smaller one, Chinese box-style, until seven are arrayed within the grand circle that outlines the perimeter of the Olivier Theatre.  Supplemented only by colored fabric swaths, those seven trunks become everything from tables, beds, and altars to horses, canoes, and drums.  This clean design sets the tone for a bold lyrical, involving three-plus hours that never lags, accented by the soaring voice of Alex Kelly as Cungonde; Daniel Evans as Candide; and a jaunty, steamroller turn by Simon Russell Beale as Dr. Pangloss.  Tracing the young hero's journey to prove his mentor's philosophy that "everything happens for the best," and find his lost love, Bernstein's solos, duets, trios, choral numbers, and full-company ensembles bounce from Bavaria, Paris, and Vienna to Paraguay, Uruguay, and Suriname.  Each stop is peppered with spicy songs, clever dialogue, and an eagerness to wrap satire in an entertaining package. - Tony Velella, from The Christian Science Monitor May 21, 1999

This may not be the best of all possible worlds but during the National's new production of Candide, you often believe you are watching the best of all possible musicals.  What makes this so startling is that Candide is the masterpiece that has almost never worked. . .  This is a book, and a musical, that asks all the big questions.  If the world has been created by a benign, all powerful God, why is there so much suffering?  If everything is for the best, where does that leave free will?  The trouble in previous productions is that the questions have been posed by comic-strip characters for whom it was virtually impossible to care.  Without losing sight of the musical's often G & S-like humour, however, Caird has humanised it, and done full justice to the distinctive voice of Voltaire himself. . .  There is a sweeping confidence about the production in which Caird is humbly "assisted" by his old boss Trevor Nunn.  This is recognisably the work of the team responsible for Nicholas Nickleby and Les Miserables, with brilliantly handled crowd scenes, and a drill sequence that would make the toughest RSM cry with envy. . .  The star of the evening is undoubtedly the magnificently compelling Russell Beale, who delivers Voltaire's words with clarity, irony and biting contempt for the foolish ways of God and man.  But there is a bruised compassion here too, and the actor also doubles virtuosically as the absurdly optimistic Pangloss.  Daniel Evans, a former Peter Pan at the National, plays the innocent Candide with a fine candour and vulnerability, and Alex Kelly is a sexy Cunegonde who delivers a knock-'em-dead rendition of the preposterous coloratura number "Glitter and Be Gay."  There's terrific support, too, from Simon Day as the snobbish Maximilian, Beverley Klein as the hilarious one-buttocked Old Lady, mountainous Clive Rowe as the loyal Cacambo and Denis Quilley as the eternally pessimistic Martin.  The lean 14-piece band are superb and the final number, "Make Our Garden Grow," with its resigned acceptance of life's lot, is as beautiful as anything on the London stage.  — from The Daily Telegraph

There is no such thing as Leonard Bernstein's Candide.  There are simply endless versions of this legendary fifties Broadway flop in which numbers are reshuffled and lyrics rewritten.  But John Caird's exciting new production solves most of the problems by making the songs spring out of a genuine philosophical debate. . .  Caird, who has drastically revised the book, has gone back to Voltaire to reinforce the musical's satire on both Leibnitzian optimism and facile pessimism.  Under the watchful eye of Simon Russell Beale's Voltaire, who wittily conjures up the characters from his imagination, we see a confrontation of two world views.  On the one hand, the philosopher Pangloss argues that all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds and that even the Lisbon earthquake is the product of a divine cause; on the other hand, the persecuted street-sweeper Martin claims the deity is malevolent and human beings uniformly bad.  The picaresque adventures of the hapless Candide demonstrate the validity of both theories.  What Caird has done is to treat the songs not as delicious appendages but as further stages in the argument.  Cunegonde's "Glitter And Be Gay," for instance, is often treated as if it were simply a parodic, Mozartian coloratura aria.  But, as sung by Alex Kelly, it is less a piece of vocal fireworks than a display of naked greed.  More crucially, one of the final numbers, "What's The Use," has been given new lyrics by Richard Wilbur.  Instead of a satire on gambling, it becomes a debate about the vanity of human wishes. . .  The virtue of Caird's production is that it celebrates Voltaire as much as Bernstein.  It also contains a cracking performance from Russell Beale. . .  there is good work too from Daniel Evans as the fate-tossed Candide, from Beverley Klein as the old woman with one buttock, and from Denis Quilley, who knows better than anyone how to put a number across, as the misanthropic Martin.  John Napier's design, in the most geographically restless of all musicals, is a model of economy, turning a set of variegated wooden chests into horses, boats and carriages.  In the end, Candide will always be one of the great flawed musicals of Broadway history.  But Caird's version is easily the most coherent I have seen and the one that most successfully uses the songs not as decoration but as a means of driving the argument forward.  — from The Guardian

Bernstein's Candide needs no introduction here, and after the slew of recordings it got late in the last century, it's doubtful it needs yet another.  But the National Theatre, again, has offered one up.  Those who saw this said it was a very good production of the operetta, using some of the Wheeler and Sondheim additions that have cropped up in later revivals.  As a one-disc version, it offers quite a bit of the score.  It also has the increasingly-lauded Simon Russell Beale as Dr Pangloss, whom I saw as an impressive Hamlet this past autumn at the National.  He's not as impressive a singer, but then neither was the nonpareil creator of the role, Max Adrian.  Other members of the historic original cast recording (on Sony 48017), such as Barbara Cook, Robert Rounseville, William Olvis, and Irra Petina, need fear no vocal competition from this youngish English group.  But try they do: Alex Kelly with a pert, basic coloratura, Daniel Evans with some pop-voiced heroics, and any number of miscellaneous singer-actors.  The Second Act is truly blessed, a final joyous gush from dear departing operetta, with the wistful 'Eldorado', the witty 'Bon Voyage', the Venice Gavotte, and the fiendishly clever "What's the Use?", before the nearly sacred "Make Our Garden Grow" choral coda.  The National uses a reduced, simplified orchestration by Bruce Coughlin that at least has been augmented for this recording; if it's a vocal Candide you want, you've got many other choices.  Still, I kept listening to this version and found myself admiring the zip, flow, and conciseness of it.