Stage review: Onassis, Novello Theatre

At the outset, when Onassis acolyte Costa (Gawn Grainger) slides a vast, impenetrable slab of back story into the auditorium, we know we're in trouble.

Why didn't the playwright weave this context into the heart of the talky script? After all, the play concerns itself with some of the most iconic moments and people in recent history so we weren't exactly flailing around in a fog of obscurity.

But, then again, this is a play with any number of problems. Writer Martin Sherman is entranced with the notion of shipping magnate Onassis as a Greek tragedy so he has gods and eagles and earth and water all over the place attempting to give the work the feel of fable.

Unfortunately, Onassis was not sufficiently magnificent, nor flawed, nor undone to make for the Shakespearean demi-god the playwright was pitching for.

That he could attract, then dispatch Maria Callas (a vituperative Anna Francolini) and Jackie Kennedy (steely Lydia Leonard) makes for a compelling character but not one that compensates for a paucity of action elsewhere from a largely static cast.

There is considerable saving grace in Robert Lindsay, pictured, who invests Onassis with an electric presence. He is commanding - prowling and snarling and charismatic and mercurial and boorish as he needs to be (although he has a tendency to mug the one-liners like he's back on the My Family set).

But this is a one-man show with a punch that fails to match its pretensions. No yacht and an E16 postcode, this Onassis could be a Guy Ritchie diamond geezer.

At the finale, there is a rousing celebration of song and dance which rallies spirits but, ultimately, the bio-play doesn't amount to much more than a by rote retelling of a rich man's scandals with some name-dropping to give it a spray-on tan of glamour.

– From October 2010