World premiere is hauntingly good

GHOST, Opera House, Manchester
MANCHESTER gets the world premiere but it won’t be long before everyone is talking about this terrific, romantic and mightily technically impressive musical of the famous movie.

If you thought the stage musical version of the Swayze-Moore romance-fest might be a slightly cheesy, over-sentimental, girly epic with a one box of tissues minimum — and that alone — then think again.

There are plenty of tears and fears, but the movie is, above everything, a light murder-thriller with romance and the afterlife thrown in — and so is this, beautifully translated from screen to stage by the movie’s writer, Bruce Joel Rubin.

But here are the headlines: Caissie Levy as Molly is sweet and endearing and has a fantastic voice; Richard Fleeshman (buff torso exposed within the first few minutes, girls) is a passionate, vulnerable and strong leading man, Andrew Langtree a good mix of nice and nasty as Carl and Sharon D Clarke a show-stealing comedienne as Oda Mae, the fake medium who turns out to be not so fake after all.

But fans won’t go for the stars — good though the leading quartet is, you would be hard-pressed to pick any of them out of a line-up. The whole is the thing: Rubin’s script takes all the major incidents of the movie — including Unchained Melody and the potter’s wheel — heightens emotions and gives us thrills, comedy and some spine-tingling moments, courtesy of strong pop-chart songs from Rubin, Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard. You can already download the show’s big ballad, With You, on the big music sites.

The musical stands beautifully on its own, every element from cast, lyrics, music and ensemble firing on all cylinders and collected with concern for the fans’ sensibilities.

But the icing on the cake is one of the most impressive sets I’ve seen, a box with three walls made up of video screens (like those at big outdoor concerts), formed around doors and openings. These move in, move out, open and close, all the while showing a stream of images — rain falling, sunset through the loft windows, a busy street and a fabulous subway train effect among them.

And there’s magic too, including a brilliant final vanish for Fleeshman: one second he’s there, another he’s gone.

The whole thing rounds up to, I suspect, a well-deserved standing ovation each night. Not a ghost of chance it won’t be a huge hit.