Romantics Anonymous, Bristol Old Vic, review: a charming, chocolatey love story that's gooey on the outside and gooey within

Why not log off from Covid doom-scrolling for a few hours and instead click (and pay) to enrol for Romantics Anonymous? No, not a dating app, but a delectable chunk of amorous escapism. The latest government edicts about who can do what with whom are pure passion-killers. By contrast, this live-stream from the Bristol Old Vic offers a serotonin-boosting musical invitation to dream of magic days when love soars.

Based on Les Émotifs anonymes, a 2010 French-Belgian film about a pair of super-talented, hyper-anxious chocolatiers, destined diffidently to meet, the show in fact represents a transatlantic triumph. The music and lyrics are by Pennsylvanian pals Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond, book and direction come courtesy of Emma Rice. After its first airing in 2017 (in the chocolate-boxy Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), the hope was that it would wind up, like Rice’s big-hearted staging of Brief Encounter, in the West End. Instead it resurfaced in January, with Bristol the launch-pad for a planned international tour.

We know – alas – what happened next. And we also know – though it’s hardly a crushing blow – what will happen in a comical-charming fashion between meek Angelique and jittery Jean-Rene. The former (played with demure self-containment and meltingly discreet hints of happiness by Carly Bawden) is a wallflower Wonka, a dab hand at turning cocoa beans into taste sensations but inclined to faint at the first whiff of attention (she attends a very funny help-group for the socially awkward). After her elderly boss dies, she gains a new youthful employer in Jean-René (Marc Antolin, splendidly uptight).

The piece is gooey on the outside, gooey within, but does contain kernels of wisdom – at once eternal and topical – about the need to break out of your bubble, defy the formulaic and choose the peril of risk over settled regret. If the songs sound a bit déjà-entendu in their inoffensive sweetness, that satisfies our current craving for comfort art. Rice duly layers on lots of primly precise and swoony ensemble movement, every ingredient thought about, an aerial lift-off at the end the Chagallian pièce de résistance. Watching it at home lacks the je ne sais quoi of being in an auditorium, but the show’s “digital tour” – allowing various UK venues to be entry-points for the stream, thereby benefiting them financially, at least keeps the hope alive that there will still be theatres to visit when – eh enfin! – all this is over.

Live every evening until Sat, then on-demand on Sept 28. Details: wisechildrendigital.com