Theatre
Anything Goes, King's Theatre, Glasgow
Alison Kerr
four stars
Lovers of musicals from the 1930s are certainly doing well in Glasgow at the moment, what with Top Hat playing at the Theatre Royal before Christmas and now Anything Goes at the King's. But whereas Top Hat, which started life as a movie, remained delightfully faithful to its original model, Anything Goes, conceived for the theatre with songs by Cole Porter, was rewritten for its revival - and shed some elements along the way.
In the first half of Tuesday's show, those elements were the laughs, which were surprisingly thin on the ground - along with any significant trace of the humour and lingo of the great PG Wodehouse who co-wrote the original show.
Indeed, the first act generally failed to fizz as much as one might have expected. Porter's witty list song You're the Top, which should have been bubbly and frothy, felt rather flat and forced. Playing sassy nightclub singer Reno, Debbie Kurup seemed slightly ill-at-ease when performing songs that didn't call for much movement. It was only for the title song, at the end of Act 1, that her inner hoofer was unleashed with a terrific dance routine featuring the ensemble tap-dancing in unison; a brilliant and unexpectedly energetic climax to the very long first half.
The show's stand-out number, the rousing and jazzy Blow Gabriel, Blow - which opened a zippier Act 2 - was even more dynamic. Kurup, looking like a cross between Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Josephine Baker (minus bananas) - was superb, and the effect of the lighting, costumes and choreography was pure MGM.
That said, the production values were impressive throughout; the exquisite period costumes and art deco sets were delights in their own right.
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