Apart from providing Michael Ball with his first break-out success in the form of the 1989 no. 2 single “Love Changes Everything”, Aspects Of Love has not been one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s more prominent successes. Its various runs have been of respectable duration in general terms, which means pretty poor in an ALW context; it took original director Trevor Nunn’s retooling in 2010 for its potential to be appreciated in a chamber context. That is clearly the direct antecedent of Jonathan O’Boyle’s revival at Southwark Playhouse, a few minutes’ walk from 2010 venue the Menier Chocolate Factory. Unfortunately, the success hasn’t followed it down the road.

It’s an uncharitable way to put it, but this is one of Lord Lloyd Webber’s least tuneful musicals. It is not quite completely sung-through, and I could count on one mutilated hand the number of occasions when I could confidently distinguish song from recitative. Richard Bates’ modest arrangement of the score for two pianos and occasional percussion can nevertheless, in such an intimate space, lead to a tussle with vocalists, especially when – as on press night – either the performers’ head mics are not always switched on or a master connection somewhere fails sporadically. The younger male performers are particularly beleaguered here: even when fully miked, Felix Mosse as Alex is consistently outgunned by Kelly Price as his long-term romantic obsession Rose.

The title refers to an assortment of emotional flavours: romantic, parental, sexual, lasting or transient, careering around amongst a central quintet of Alex, Rose, his uncle George, his mistress Giulietta and, later, George and Rose’s daughter Jenny, over a period of 17 years beginning in 1947. The score, and Don Black and Charles Hart’s lyrics, fit the register of the narrative, in that it all feels primarily like an exercise: we never settle on any psychological perspective. I suppose the focus is intended to be Alex, but neither Mosse as a performer nor the narcissistic, insecure character as written can sustain our engagement.

There’s also an aspect which makes it inconceivable that such a show could be written in 2019: the fact that Alex gives serious consideration to involving himself with 15-year-old Jenny. We would no doubt refuse to be distracted by the fact that the age of sexual consent in France was then and still is 15, nor that – as Jenny points out to him – Alex himself was only 17 when he began his affair with Rose. It is interesting, though, that David Garnett, the bisexual Bloomsburyite author of the original novel, did in fact marry the daughter of his sometime lover Duncan Grant.

Jerome Pradon shines as Uncle George (and also gets arguably the most affecting number, “The First Man You Remember”, sung to and with the blossoming Jenny), and O’Boyle’s direction copes well with a plethora of scene changes. Ultimately, though, there is simply no respect in which the work ever comes to rest long enough to begin to forge an identity.

Written for the Financial Times.