I don't know nothin' 'bout writin' musicals...

LONDON (Reuters) - Critics decided they "didn't give a damn" on Wednesday after the world premier of a new musical version of the American Civil War epic "Gone With the Wind."

Headline writers had a field day adapting Rhett Butler's famous parting shot to Scarlett O'Hara -- and most reviewers agreed the show was far too long at over three and a half hours.

"Frankly my dear, it's not up to much" decided the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts after the first night of the musical directed by Trevor Nunn, famed for his stagings of "Cats" and "Les Miserables" that became worldwide hits.

"Where is the story's raw allure?" asked Letts. "The music feels a bit off-the-peg," he said of the score by Californian Margaret Martin.

The Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer decided "Frankly, my dear, it's a damn long night."

"By the second half, I felt like screaming every time a new song started," he wrote. "The only people likely to give a damn about this 'Gone With The Wind' are the investors who risk losing their shirts."

"Frankly this show is damned," decided The Evening Standard.

Both The Times and the Guardian gave just two stars to the show starring British TV talent show discovery Darius Danesh as Rhett Butler and American Jill Paice as Scarlett.

"Should we give a damn?" asked the Guardian.

"Oh for the fire and passion of Gable and Leigh," said the Times' Benedict Nightingale, harking nostalgically back to the 1939 movie.

Best of a distinctly lukewarm bunch of critics was Paul Taylor in The Independent who gave the musical three stars.

But even he concluded "I was left wondering whether, on the whole, this quixotic enterprise takes us any deeper into the inner life of 'Gone With the Wind.'"

When Margaret Mitchell's debut novel was published in 1936, The New York Times called it "one of the most remarkable first novels produced by an American writer."

The book sold one million copies in the first six months, topped bestseller lists for two years and won the Pulitzer prize.

But Mitchell found instant celebrity intrusive, complaining "I'm on the run. I'm sure Scarlett O'Hara never struggled more during the siege of Atlanta than I have suffered during the siege that has been on since publication day."

The movie won ten Oscars and Mitchell was under intense pressure to write a sequel.

But in 1949 she died after being hit by a car and, on her strict orders, her husband destroyed all of Mitchell's unfinished manuscripts. She was just 48 years old.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)