Aspects of Love review

Our story (brace yourself) begins in post-war France – cue, naturally, cobbles and accordions – where Rose Vibert (Laura Pitt-Pulford), a young actress, is struggling to make her name. When a teenage fan, Alex (Jamie Bogyo), visits her dressing room, she improbably agrees to flit off with him to a villa in the Pyrenees before she even knows his name. There, she meets his wealthy uncle George (Ball) – and whoops, being a brainless creature for whom the dehumanising phrase “object of desire” might have been invented, she falls for him too. 

The love triangle thus constructed, we’re then treated to 20 narrative years of maundering, bickering and bed-swapping, in which the low points include Rose and George’s arty Italian mistress (operatic soprano Danielle de Niese) bonding over his adorable little ways (“shameless old Romeo”, they coo), and the arrival of George and Rose’s daughter Jenny (Anna Unwin), who swiftly becomes underage catnip to cousin Alex and subject to a bilious, quasi-incestuous tug-of-love between him and her own father.

The enormously gifted Pitt-Pulford is wasted here, reduced to endless pouting and girly twirling; Bogyo is petulant and De Niese a cringe-inducingly cartoonish sex bomb. Ball performs with characteristic ease, soaringly delivering the song everyone’s waiting for, which has been shamelessly reallocated from Alex to George for the occasion. But enduring this lurid musical male fantasy is a high price to pay: one tiny spark of nostalgia for one giant ick.