Crazy For You

"Crazy For You" is an old-fashioned, dance heavy musical that thrills when it works but flatlines when it doesn't. It would be hard to argue that Ken Ludwig's book is as good as it should be but the collated Gershwin songbook goes from hit to hit to hit.

The show's themes are unlikely to strike anyone as original but it's a charming tale. Our hero Bobby, played by the positively effervescent Sean Palmer, is a New Yorker desperate to be a star of the stage. At the start of the show he is sent to a decrepit western town by his overbearing mother. Here he falls in love with the local girl and you know the rest... The evening hums along nicely though the narrative is really just a route from each song to the next and longueurs develop whenever these gaps grow too great. Occasionally witty but not consistently enough.

This production started at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre and has now migrated to the West End where it works effectively if looking slightly spare. The simple scenery is remarkably adaptable, two rotating buildings providing all the settings, but lacks the visual pizazz that can be found in the costumes. Someone foolishly decided the show needed a revolve (hardly used at all) whose installation has resulted in the Novello stage being about two feet higher than usual and as a result the front six rows or so lose the actors' feet: a mindboggling error when you consider this is a tap dancing show.

Conversion problems aside this is a first rate staging that after a dodgy five minutes or so of lame dialogue unleashes the first big dance number and never looks back. Stephen Mear's choreography, using Susan Stroman's work as a base, is full of wow moments, packing the stage with stunning performers in sparkly outfits. The lightly comic text is only enhanced by the physical performances from the cast, brawls and shootouts sitting side by side with high kicking and spectacular tapping.

Alongside Palmer, who is a fabulous leading man, singing and dancing his way into our hearts, the large cast is pretty consistently excellent. Clare Foster acts the lead female role impeccably and dances elegantly, her vocals are weaker than they should be however, pitch not a strength, and her accent was variable at best. These two dominate the evening but high praise to David Burt for his superb comic turn in Act II, a drunken scene that coud have fallen very flat but became the highlight of the evening, and Alexis Owen Hobbs for her delectably dizzy chorus girl.

If you're looking for an easygoing night out you could do a great deal worse than "Crazy For You". It's not perfect by any means, the script hardly living up to the tunes, but what amazing tunes they are. The house was little more than half full the night I attended so I'd recommend going sooner rather than later. I can't see it lasting more than a couple more months at this point.

(Review of Performance on Monday, January 9th, 2012 at the Novello Theatre)