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Menier Chocolate Factory, LondonThis pitch-perfect revival of Sandy Wilson’s 1953 musical is a positive invitation to dance
Time has been good to Sandy Wilson’s 1953 musical. Although set in the 1920s, it seems to exist, like the work of PG Wodehouse, in its own exquisitely fabricated world where wealth proves no obstacle to true love and where the sun always shines. It also gets a pitch-perfect revival from Matthew White in which light irony never descends into camp knowingness.
The Riviera-based story, involving the romantic entanglement of a millionaire’s daughter and an aristocrat’s son, is simply a teasing trifle. What really counts are Wilson’s melodic gift and verbal dexterity. His delicious score, embracing tap, tango and a two-step, is a positive invitation to dance that Bill Deamer’s choreography eagerly accepts: Won’t You Charleston With Me? is the showstopper with Gabrielle Lewis-Dodson, as one of the young ladies at a French finishing school, doing some of the highest kicks you could wish to see. Continue reading...