Thursday April 25th 1996
| All Aboard For Fun |
Anything Goes! |
|
WHAT better way to combat a
dismal spring that refuses to loosen its grip on winter than with a song, a
dance, plenty of laughs and lots of colour?
That's certainly what RMDS has
to offer with this sparkling production by Rosemary Guy of Cole Porter's
perennial favourite.
Ingenious staging (I wondered how they were going to cope with
all those scene chances on such a limited space) and subtle lighting create all
the necessary atmosphere of life aboard the SS America in the 1930s.
The plot may be virtually
nonexistent - it's incidental to the action anyway - but who's complaining when
it provides an ideal vehicle for such showstoppers as the title song. Anything
Goes, You're The Top, I Get a Kick Out of You and Blow Gabriel Blow!
Congratulations to virtually the whole cast for tackling
at least a bit of the obligatory tap dancing (it seems to be all the rage!) and
there's plenty of enthusiasm on the singing front, but what else would you
expect with the energetic Jane Platt' wielding the baton? If I had one criticism it would be that at times the
orchestra tended to drown out the singers (despite the body mikes) but maybe the
sound gremlins would be ironed out later.
Suzy Collins was a stunning Reno
Sweeney, with plenty of pizzazz and personality, Julian Peckham as Billy and
Tina Stockley as Hope, the object of his desires, provided the tender moments.
Comedy came in the form of the
indefatigable John Truman as Moonface Martin the gangster, ably supported by
Jenny Holder as Erma, his "moll". But the undoubted star of the
show (apart from well-behaved Bielke the Cavalier King Charles spaniel) was
Richard Bennett, as the archetypal Hooray Henry, Lord Evelyn Oakleigh. His
upper-crust accent and gangling gait had me in hysterics. A performance to
savour.
The new raked seating makes all
the difference to comfort, too. Sarah Ford |