<<  -- 7 --  Roderic Dunnett    A HAUNTING FUTURE

The sailors' quartet ('A sailor's life is supposed to be ...') fielded a capable top and bottom line and unleashed a clutch of new gags ('I just saw him going with the mizzen mast.' 'We don't have a mizzen mast.' 'Then it must have been someone else.') 'It's friendship' proved as worthy a hit as the title song; the Angels sequence was catchy, and they moved well of their own accord. Alas, the direction here seemed flimsy, but the variable choreography (Craig Revel-Horwood) suddenly came good, yielding some effective high kicking and, relievingly, a natty dance routine.

The twosome of Billy and Hope (Deborah Dutcher) foundered somewhat on her weakish, rather back-vowelled singing (apt enough for the shy 21 year old role, but insufficient to galvanise a show). 'All through the night' lost impact as a result, but 'Times have changed ...' unleashed Criswell in fine form, soon emerging as the full blooded hit song 'Anything Goes', from which the show takes its title, with Reno and Barbershop quartet on stupendous form and Chris Davey's lighting going cheerfully bananas. Reno's gospel 'confession sequence' was admirably staged, with hunky angels stripping off purple robes to launch a triumphant sequence, all reds and whites and blues in Davey's lighting plot, that had the audience in full flow too ('Blow, Gabriel, blow').

And with this the other star performer, Simon Green (recently Noel Coward in Noel and Gertie) as the lust-struck aristocrat Lord Evelyn Oakleigh ('The Gypsy in Me') came gloriously into his own. His moment of lift-off was as astonishing as if Arthur Lowe and John le Mesurier had launched into a Tango, or Lord Ashburton had zipped up from a trapdoor with castanets and a bandoneon. Together with conductor Nick Davies's splendid pianissimo start to the reprised 'I get a kick from champagne' and some classic Pountney curtain calls, it lifted this whole wobbly show into a soaring Grange Park triumph.