A MUSICAL adaptation of The Man in the Iron Mask in the West End of London is to close after some of the most damning theatre reviews in recent memory.

The announcement came only two days after the curtain rose on the world premiere of Behind the Iron Mask at the Duchess Theatre, and a day after the critics delivered their scathing verdict.

The music and lyrics were written by John Robinson, 72, an eminent aerospace engineer, who invested £500,000 of his own money to bring the show to the West End.

Staging it was the last wish of his late wife, Shirley Ann. As she lay dying of cancer, she made him promise that he would present his show in a West End theatre.

Alexandre Dumas famously based his 1841 novel on the story of Louis XIV and the masked mystery man who many people believed to be the King’s twin brother.

The cast included Sheila Ferguson, the lead singer of the Three Degrees, and Robert Fardell, who played Jean Valjean in Les Misérables at the Palace Theatre, and whose film credits include The Lord of the Rings.

Mr Robinson’s wife had loved the show and could see its potential, but the critics were merciless after witnessing Tuesday night’s premiere performance.

The Times wrote: “The lyrics are mostly vile . . . The twists of behaviour would take platoons of psychologists to unravel.”

Others suggested that the only member of the three-strong cast to emerge with any dignity intact was the central character, and only because he spent the evening with a bent saucepan on his head and would therefore be unrecognisable at auditions for future work.

The Daily Telegraph found it “unendurable” and the Evening Standard branded it “woeful”, saying: “Anyone who pays £43.50 for a ticket to this embarrassment deserves to be locked up for a very long time.”

Mr Robinson, who is an expert on finite element stress analysis and head of his own consulting firm, threw in the towel after reading the reviews.

He lives in Devon and yesterday was maintaining a low profile. He was said to be devastated.

In a statement, the producers of the show said: “It is with great regret that we announce the closure of Behind The Iron Mask at the Duchess Theatre.

“The current state of the West End has meant that many shows are discounting to keep running. It has been difficult for a new musical to sustain sufficient audience levels and meet its running costs.”

One insider suggested that the theatre owners should never have staged the musical in the first place. He added that it would have been kinder to have turned it down and spared its creator from having to read the vicious reviews.

“It also doesn’t help the cause of the West End theatre. The public will be put off going to other productions.”

The show began previews on July 22. The last performance will be on August 20. It will, however, receive more stagings than some productions. The disc jokey Mike Read saw his musical about Oscar Wilde close after its first night, having been savaged by the critics.

'SO BAD, IT'S UNENDURABLE'

‘John Robinson’s musical is not as gloriously inept as Fields of Ambrosia, which began with a boy being fried in an electric chair while Southern belles chorused that he was being wafted to paradise . . . but as jail musicals or dungeon dramas go, Behind the Iron Mask is still the pits’
The Times

‘Behind the Iron Mask doesn’t even fall into the cherished ‘so bad it’s good’ category. It’s so bad that it is merely unendurable. There’s no insane flourish to its mediocrity, no sublimity to its awfulness. It is just relentlessly, agonisingly third-rate’
The Daily Telegraph

‘There have been musicals that have closed after a couple of performances. But Behind the Iron Mask looked at times as though it was going to close before the interval on its press night. There were moments when it seemed to run completely out of steam, as though, like its audience, it was losing the will to live’
The Independent

‘To suggest that Behind The Iron Mask is terrible doesn’t do justice to its relentless awfulness’
The Daily Express

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