Our Mutual Friend has been turned into a musical with a new title, London Tide, which sounds duller and more forgettable than the original. Why change the name? To confuse fans of Dickens, presumably, and to keep the theatre half-empty while heaps of tickets are sold at a discount.
At the end of Act One, an actor explains the entire plot. This might have been delivered earlier
The plot is a cheesy Victorian whodunnit involving three main characters and multiple locations so it’s hard to follow the action as it flits from this lowly hovel to that seedy tavern. The chief personalities are a pretentious lawyer, a psychotic teacher and a shifty lodger who won’t reveal his name. Could the shifty lodger be connected to a stingy millionaire who recently died and left a fortune to his estranged son on the condition that he marries a haughty young woman? Yes he could.
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