This summer’s musical treat

Chichester Festival Theatre

⭑⭑⭑⭑

Lucy St Louis & Phillip Attmore in Top Hat. Photo: Johan Persson

Every year I look forward to the Chichester Festival Theatre musical. Among the first class revivals of recent years have been Oliver!, South Pacific, Crazy For You with the incomparable Charlie Stemp, and Gypsy with Imelda Staunton. This year, they have chosen Top Hat, and, while it may not reach the heights of the aforementioned hits, it does not disappoint. There’s already an extensive UK tour booked for it, so you will have the chance to see for yourself.

Once again, Chichester have put together a mouth watering feast. Top Hat is primarily a tap dance show- it was written for Fred Astaire- and the dancing here is creme de la creme. Choreographed, as well as directed, by the great Kathleen Marshall, who was responsible for the London hit Anything Goes, the solo dances, the what you might call Fred and Ginger numbers and the chorus line work are all masterclasses in how it should be done. The sound of the tap is music in itself and 16 dancers or thereabouts combining to stamp the floor at the same time is explosive. The discipline, especially of the chorus lines, is genuinely awesome, as arm-in-arm they make a circular movement, all the while high kicking. Ms Marshall’s choreography is exuberant, uplifting and joyous.

A brief word about the story. A superstar tap dancer called Jerry falls in love with a woman called Dale but, owing to a misunderstanding, she thinks he’s his friend Horace, husband of her friend Madge. Spoiler alert- it all works out in the end.

Then there’s the music. Irving Berlin wrote 1500 songs throughout a long career but the five he wrote for the original film represent him at his peak and extending his ability to write songs that serve the story: No Strings establishes the carefree character of Jerry, as well as his prowess as a tap dancer; Isn’t This A Lovely Day starts with Jerry and Dale in a standoff but reveals her increasing attachment to him as the song progresses; Cheek To Cheek, the centrepiece of the musical, shows Jerry seducing Dale through the power of dance- a true representation of the saying ‘dance is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire, with climactic moments as he swings her through the air; and then there are the two big chorus line numbers Top Hat, White Tie And Tails and The Piccolino, which end the first act and begin the second in the stage version. All praise to Stephen Ridley and the 10 piece orchestra for their swinging sound.

Top Hat, released in cinemas in 1935, only became a stage musical in 2011 when it was adapted by Matthew White and Howard Jacques. There are many more Berlin tunes added, quite a few plundered from other Fred and Ginger movies, including Puttin’ On The Ritz, I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket, Let Yourself Go and Let’s Face The Music And Dance.

Top Hat at Chichester Festival Theatre. Photo: Johan Persson

The six principals are superb, and the ensemble is wonderful. The hardest task goes to Phillip Attmore. How to step into the shoes of Fred Astaire? Not to mention that the show itself refers to him as a world-class dancer. And, unlike the legendary star, he has to perform live. He may not quite be Fred Astaire (who is?) but he is a likeable lead and an accomplished dancer.

Lucy St Louis as Dale is the full package. She has a powerful singing voice, acts well and dances beautifully. For me she was a revelation, although I shouldn’t be surprised, because she’s already played Glinda in Wicked and Christine in The Phantom Of The Opera (you may have seen her perform at the Platinum Party At The Palace).

Clive Carter and Sally Ann Triplett as Horace and Madge provide a weight of experience and a huge dose of comedy. James Clyde as Horace’s servant Bates in various disguises, and Alex Gibson-Giorgio as Alberto, a comical Italian fashion designer and Dale’s would-be lover also keep the laughs coming. I know it’s no longer acceptable to make fun of foreigners who don’t speak English as well as us- ‘I am very displeased to meet you!’- but such lines were written a long time ago.

There is a great deal of funny lines, or perhaps corny jokes would be a better description. Here are a couple of examples: Horace is afraid of flying because the first word you see on signs at the airport is ‘Terminal’. He also explains that a man is incomplete until he’s married- ‘Then he’s finished.’ But that’s very much in the mood of this light comedy which, as I said, is about dance first, then music, and only then comedy to fill the gaps.

Peter McIntosh‘s luminous art deco set is very clever. The thrust stage is kept clear for dancing, although there are semi-circular rises. At the back there is a revolve that swiftly takes us from one bedroom to another bedroom to a bar. He along with Yvonne Milnes also designed the costumes which have the loose, easy-going feel of the 1940s rather than slavishly copying the 1930s style of the film.

I left the auditorium on a high. Top Hat on stage may not have the wow factor of Crazy For You or Anything Goes. But then again there were no equivalent films to compare them with, so it is disadvantaged by not being able to match the perfection of the film. On the other hand, the fact that it is performed live, and you can see a group of supremely talented people right there in front of you creating beautiful, athletic, complex dance together to some of the greatest songs ever written, makes Top Hat at Chichester Festival Theatre, despite any imperfections, a joy better than any flickering screen.

Top Hat can be seen at Chichester Festival Theatre until 6 September 2025. Buy tickets direct from the theatre

Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.

Watch this review on YouTube

Sutton Foster’s West End debut is the top

★★★★★

Production photo of Sutton Foster in Anything Goes at The Barbican Theatre London — Sutton Foster in Anything Goes. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Cole Porter’s Anything Goes at The Barbican is the best musical performance I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. And it’s thanks to one person- Sutton Foster.

This is Sutton Foster’s first London appearance. I guess Broadway audiences know all about her qualities but in this review I’m going pick out the five key moments in which she showed she has what it takes to launch this show into the musical stratosphere. That’s not to play down the importance of Kathleen Marshall who directed and choreographed the original Broadway production and gave Sutton Foster the vehicle to show off her talent. Nor am I underestimating the support she receives from Robert Lindsay and others. And we can never forget the foundation stone of Cole Porter’s songs.

Sutton Foster very nearly didn’t appear. The part of nightclub singer Reno Sweeney was due to be played by Megan Mullally, but after she dropped out with an injury, Ms Foster- the original Tony Award-winning Reno- was drafted in. Well, Megan Mullally’s bad luck is our good fortune.

Let me set the scene. Nearly all the action takes place on the deck of a ship with interior scenes rolled on or dropped in as needed, so we nearly always have in view Derek McLane’s phallic funnels and vaginal doors and portholes, never letting us forget that this is a musical that’s at least as much about sex as romance. Then there are the parallel lines of those smokestacks which prepare us for the precision of the chorus lines.

1 She Acts

After a jolly overture in which the conductor Stephen Ridley wears a naval officer’s white hat, the top of which is picked out by a spotlight, and a short scene that kicks off the ludicrous and frankly irrelevant plot, we meet Reno Sweeney for the first time. She sings I Get A Kick Out Of You.

In modern musicals, which is to say mainly those written after Rodgers And Hammerstein changed everything, the songs are led by and enhance the story. In Cole Porter’s hey day, the 1930s, it was more a case of the story being built around the songs. So we have this classic love song, sung by Reno about young Billy Crocker. She says she’s in love with him but in no time at all she’s helping him snare the love of his life Hope Harcourt.

Even though it seems like her feelings for Billy are invented simply so she can sing this song, and even though we’ve heard it a thousand times, you very quickly realise that something extraordinary is happening here. Sutton Foster is putting in phrasing- pauses, emphases- making it personal. She’s singing like she really doesn’t understand why she has feelings for this young man. She forces this and every other song she sings (and she does have all the best songs) to mean something in the context of the show. It’s like hearing the song for the first time. Because she is acting the song.

2 She’s Funny

After Billy decides to stow away on an ocean liner bound for Britain so that he can court Hope, only to discover she is engaged to an aristocratic Englishman, Reno gives him a confidence boost. She tells him You’re The Top. It may start as Reno trying to cheer up Billy but it ends as a competition between them to find ever more bizarre compliments. So we begin with the over-the-top

‘You’re the Nile
You’re the Tow’r of Pisa
You’re the smile
On the Mona Lisa’

but end with ‘You’re broccoli.’ Now, this is a comic song but Sutton Foster takes the comedy to a new height thanks to her facial expressions: puzzlement at some of the comparisons, triumph when she finds yet another rhyme. She is indeed ‘the nose on the great Durante’.

3 She’s A Team Player

Prtoduction photo of Robert Lindsay and Sutton Foster in Anything Goes at The Barbican Theatre in London — Robert Lindsay and Sutton Foster in Anything Goes. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Billy and Hope, played by Samuel Edwards and Nicole-Lily Baisden, have a moment, as does Gary Wilmot, who doesn’t have a lot to do but what he does is reliably comic. Then Sutton Foster and Robert Lindsay have their only number together, Friendship. Usually, the part of Moonface Martin, a gangster disguised as a priest, is a relatively minor character in a subplot but in this production- and all credit here to the director Kathleen Marshall– he becomes a lead.

On Broadway, the great Joel Grey took the part. In London, we, and Sutton Foster, are blessed with Robert Lindsay. It sometimes seems Mr Lindsay can do anything. I last saw him extracting tears as a legendary Hollywood cameraman suffering from dementia in Prism. But of course, he is a skilled comic actor as he showed as the star of the revival of Me And My Girl. His greatest quality is his understanding of how to work an audience.

So his patter as he breaks off from the duet is pure vaudeville and transforms a comic song into comedy genius, with jokes about it being a shame Sutton Foster’s London debut is in the City of London, not the West End. And if you’re not familiar with this in-joke, it’s true that while the size of the venue and the show are ‘West End’, it is geographically speaking somewhat to the east. And what’s great about Sutton Foster is that she sails with him on this almost stream of consciousness, so that they really do seem like friends.

4 She Can Dance

The climax to the first act is the song Anything Goes. If there’s a serious theme to this musical (and there probably isn’t), it’s that standards of good and bad and right and wrong have been swept away in contemporary society, and that anyone can become a celebrity, including gangsters like Moonface Martin and Public Enemy Number One Snake Eyes Johnson, whom Billy Crocker is mistaken for, just as we find in today’s celebrity culture. This suits Cole Porter’s cynicism and gives us the song and show title.

By now, we’ve already tasted the quality of Kathleen Marshall’s choreography but this number goes up a gear. The company generates enough energy for a power station. Sutton Foster’s energy is nuclear. And so is her dancing, as she leads the synchronised stage-filling chorus through a tap routine that just builds and builds. I can’t remember when I last saw a standing ovation at the end of act one.

5 She has limitless energy

So act two opens with Reno singing Blow Gabriel Blow, a song that absolutely doesn’t fit. Why on earth would a nightclub singer sing a gospel song? Apparently, it’s because she was once an evangelist. Okay, why not? For quality of choreography and performance, it takes up where Anything Goes left off. The number starts with Sutton Foster in a preacher’s outfit but before long she and her troupe have shed their white robes to reveal red, devilishly skimpy showgirl dresses that show she also has a fantastic figure. When the dancers sway rhythmically in a close group it’s like a cauldron and again Sutton Foster, who must have been exhausted as the end of act one, is right at the centre of it, setting the stage on fire.

It’s worth remembering that the part of Reno was written for Ethel Merman and has been played in the past by luminaries such as Patti Lupone and Elaine Paige. We can add Sutton Foster to that pantheon of musical stars. Her next role is alongside Hugh Jackman in The Music Man on Broadway. I hope, after this success, we’ll be seeing more of her on this side of the Atlantic.

Those were my five moments to remember but there’s a lot more to enjoy in the production, of course. A delightful version of The Gypsy in Me in which the English Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, played by Haydn Oakley, reveals a previously unexpected passionate side leading to a comic tango with Sutton Foster, which includes an impressive vertical split from her. There’s the comedy song Be Like The Bluebird which gives Robert Lindsay a brilliant solo moment; and Carly Mercedes Dyer who recently acted everyone else off the stage as Shug Avery in the Leicester Curve production of The Color Purple gives the raunchiest version imaginable of Buddie, Beware.

Without Sutton Foster, and Robert Lindsay in support, this production would still be amusing, energetic and visually impressive but, with them, it’s the top.

Anything Goes performed at The Barbican until 31st October 2021. A return to the Barbican and a tour are planned for 2022 (with a new cast). An excellent film of the stage show is available on BBC iPlayer anythinggoesmusical.co.uk

Click here to watch the video of this review on YouTube