English Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro has had several works translated into film – notably The Remains of the Day (1993) and Never Let Me Go (2010) – but Melbourne Theatre Company’s Come Rain or Come Shine is the first stage musical based on his work. One of five short stories on the theme of music and nightfall that make up the collection Nocturnes (2009), it’s an odd little tale of friendship and failure that careens from the gently elegiac to the outright farcical, like F. Scott Fitzgerald via Michael Frayn. Ishiguro is rightly celebrated as a master of tonal control, but Come Rain or Come Shine has a tendency to teeter on the precipice of several genres without landing satisfyingly on any of them. Set against the majority of Ishiguro’s output, it feels like a failed minor experiment.