Candide: Theatre review - 'At once spine-tingling and spiritually unearned' - Reviews - Theatre & Dance - The Independent Bernstein's score is a miracle of sparkling comic pastiche; the lyrics (by several hands) are unflaggingly droll. But Voltaire's satire against the complacency of philosophical optimism is basically one joke taken on a picaresque global tour of disaster spots and religious iniquities. White's cast (which includes Scarlett Strallen as a rather heavy-handed Cunegonde) sing up a storm and revel in the delicious guying of absurd literary conventions. It's a pity, though, that the production reverts to Hugh Wheeler's 1973 book which is a one-damn-thing-after-another romp unlike John Caird's 1999 NT rewrite which tried to impose some unity on the proceedings by introducing Voltaire as puppet master. James Dreyfus is in fine form as a gamey, disreputable Pangloss. Fra Fee brings a sweet tousled soulfulness to the naïve hero. But the repetitiveness and the musical lurches between knowing mock-flippancy and plangent lament deterring emotional engagement. And so here the climactic "Make Our Garden Grow" chorale manages to feel at once spine-tingling and spiritually unearned.