Identical, review: identity-swap musical that’s ingenious to the point of genius

Composer George Stiles and lyricist Anthony Drewe have enjoyed a huge hit with their stage version of Mary Poppins. Their latest, Identical, centring on identical twin sisters, is wholly original. It may not be in the same league as Poppins, or for that matter, the comparable Matilda. But starring real-life miracles of nature who prove to be forces of theatrical wonder, it has the makings of a must-see phenomenon.

The show is derived from a 1949 novel, Lisa and Lottie, by the German author Erich Kastner. The book was rendered familiar via its Hollywood incarnations as The Parent Trap; first Hayley Mills then Lindsay Lohan portrayed spitting-image siblings separated in infancy after parental estrangement, reunited by chance at summer camp and resolving to swap places to find out how the other half lives and rebuild the family unit.

With a script by Stuart Paterson that closely honours the original, the juvenile leads face substantial demands in terms of singing, dancing and line-learning but they also in effect have to “be themselves”. That’s no less remarkable a feat; the tyro actresses in question must react to each other as if they’re strangers, and wonder at their situation as much as we do.

Producer Kenny Wax and director Trevor Nunn must be thanking heaven for the little girls their casting team has recruited. The show I caught featured Northern Irish prodigies Kyla – playing Lisa, who passes herself off as Lottie – and Nicole Fox (vice versa). And you hang on their every action – from initial discombobulation, past hugging acceptance, towards impish conspiracy, denoted by identikit twin pig-tails.

Scenic and video wizardry from Robert Jones and Douglas O’Connell (utilising some 25 million pixels of light) compound the head-turning, if gentle excitement. You’re whisked in a trice from Mitteleuropean rural idylls, complete with moving clouds, boats and birds, to picturesque Vienna (home to the girls’ composer-conductor father, who’s smitten with a maritally scheming ballerina) and Munich (where lives the girls’ journalist mother); trees sway in the breeze, trams trundle.

The singing is superb and the music serves the fairy-tale-like story well, expressive of giggling youthful exuberance in the camp, the metropolitan sophistication of a Hansel and Gretel ballet, and exploring the attendant childhood and parental angst with a light touch. Does it sound a bit samey at times? Yes. But the way it combines one girl’s music with the other’s lyrics in the finale, so that each completes and complements the other, is ingenious to the point of genius, eliciting awe at the complex mysteries of life and at the finely-wrought truthfulness of art.

Until Aug 14. Tickets: 0115 941 9419; nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk; then at the Lowry, Salford (0343 208 6000; thelowry.com), Aug 19-Sept 3