This is a 25th anniversary production, revived by Richard Baron and other than a lick of paint and a comb through that’s the extent of the dust off.  It should be called ‘A night in the museum’ as this is what it felt like, and there were times when this slow show seemed to drag. A pity for a show based completely around the energetic vigour of Tap Dancing.

However, I have learned not to crack a pickled walnut with my critics sledgehammer and will treat this as the lightweight froth and pointless fun that it is, I will overlook the hammy acting and the strange and sudden ‘feel good’ tap dancing ending and instead concentrate on the lovely feeling of it all washing by and watching some vaguely famous people on stage making the audience laugh. This might be magnanimous of me and it will also mean that this review is only a tenth as funny as it should be, but then it will reflect the play in that case.

I think I was the only person who didn’t enjoy this confection and the theatre audience really had a good time, they loved Anita Harris’s well meaning but doomed to disaster snob ‘Vera’ even though I thought her a hyperactive cross between Popeye’s Olive Oil and the mummy of Nefertiti. Fans will forgive a lot.

The cast bumbled this way and mumbled that and there was no real feeling of connection with the characters. This seemed to be played for laughs which perhaps considering it’s age was the most sympathetic approach. Brian Capron’s meek ‘Geoffrey’ as the only man in an evening class full of slightly desperate ladies was an exercise in minimalism.

The supporting case, all playing women and girls, all borderline emotionally retarded and each with a clichéd secret which would keep the net curtains of Hove twitching for some time, did their best. It was not hard to shine. This one’s getting beaten up, that one’s fat, this one’s shy, she’s hapless, he’s empty, that one’s husband is shagging the daughter. None of these bigger issues were explored and this left the characters feeling as one dimensional as Ms Harris’ profile. There were some very funny moments and Janet De Vegne’s ‘Mrs. Fraser’ got a lot of them, her surreal homage to Irvin Berlin being a delight, but this broad brush and range of stereotypical actresses gave this weak material a really good going over, squeezing every laugh out of is, wringing it dry in some cases. The audience loved it.

So, like I said, no sledgehammer, not even a claw hammer, (perhaps a little playful tap on the knee with a toffee hammer and no more?) The play is not pretending to be great theatre, and if it was then it should be ashamed of itself, but what it did do, and do well, was thrill, amuse and entertain a full house who left in high sprits and who obviously enjoyed themselves. Even my (usually cynical) companion was clapping along like a demented seal by the spangled and tap heavy ending.

What I enjoyed most of all about this play was watching a group of talented actresses hold the stage themselves for most of the time and I am sure that more than of one of them was using their tap shoes to send a Morse code plea for help to me across the stalls.

The women behind me commented what a ‘miserable person’ I must be for not clapping along, I was a miserable person that evening but, dear reader, cheered up the moment the show finished.  Rather magnanimously I didn’t throw her a fish.
 
Until Sat 24th July at the Theatre Royal, Brighton.
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