42nd Street review – frivolous fantasy given punch, precision and panache
There’s a seam of bright positivity running through 42nd Street, originally a book and film dating from the midst of the Great Depression. It says buck up, lace up your dancing shoes, get out there and put on a show. And also, be young, pretty and ever so nice, and good fortune will come your way.
While some 20th-century musicals are being revised for modern times (Oklahoma!, Carousel), director Jonathan Church has kept this one firmly in place, with period detail from mild sexism to the nasally twangs of those high female voices, deco sparkle channelling Erté glamour (from designer Robert Jones) and black and white news footage of the desperate unemployed.
Where the 1933 film was more abrasive in tone, the stage show, created in 1980, is sweetly endearing, just like its accidental leading lady Peggy Sawyer (Nicole-Lily Baisden), the classic small town girl looking to make it in the big city, rolling into Penn Station with raw talent and a dream. Baisden, last seen in the smash hit Anything Goes, has a dazzling smile to light up Broadway and plays Peggy the naif with innocent enthusiasm and turbo-charged tap skills.
The plot, well, what does it matter, but there’s a make-or-break opening, ageing star Dorothy Brock (Ruthie Henshall) juggling the sugar daddy bankrolling her career and her true love, a few unnecessary misunderstandings, fabulous hoofing and a glut of excellent songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin. It’s those songs – along with the motoring rhythms of Bill Deamer’s choreography – that really drive the show. Just when you think it’s all getting a bit silly, then strikes up the classic Lullaby of Broadway, or Henshall singing the a cappella opening of I Only Have Eyes for You, and silly turns sublime. Henshall may be playing a faded star, but she’s still the commanding presence of this show. Bar one flat note, her singing’s on another level, the rich reeds of her voice and rounded tones in the lower registers especially. You’re Getting to Be a Habit With Me is a real treat.
The other great voice in the show is the suave Sam Lips as Billy Lawler, with his strong, bright tenor. Adam Garcia puts in a solid performance as demanding director Julian Marsh, although for someone best known as a killer tap dancer, you’re just dying for him to come out hoofing. So sunny are the vibes that those characters who are supposedly caddish or cantankerous come out as decent chaps. And there’s good support all round from Josefina Gabrielle, Les Dennis, Michael Praed and Anthony Ofoegbu as the show’s writers and Dorothy’s love interests respectively.
The ensemble is tight in harmony and choreography, Deamer’s tap routines sharply drawn, with anticipatory tension in the dancers’ bodies and rhythms exacting enough to hear the silence between the beats, plus Astaire-esque lightness in the soft-shoe numbers. Rhianna Dorris, as Winnie, is the chorus member really selling it, giving punch, precision and panache.
42nd Street is a frivolous show, utter fantasy, that bounces along very nicely; a paean to showbiz and the restorative power of a strictly rehearsed song and dance number.
At Sadler’s Wells, London, until 2 July. Then touring until 28 October.
