THE BOY FRIEND
★★★★
Menier Chocolate Factory, until March 7 Tickets: 020 7378 1713
SANDY Wilson’s 1954 musical is both a nostalgia trip back to the lost world of the 1920s and an affectionate pastiche of devil-may-care pre-war attitudes.
Set in a finishing school for “young gels” on the French Riviera, it is a breezy, delightful confection bursting with great songs and memorably ditzy characters.
There’s poor little rich girl Polly Browne (sweet-voiced Amara Okereke) whose single father is wary of gold-digging suitors; and her chums, Maisie (Gabrielle LewisDodson, fizzing with naughtiness), Dulcie (Annie Southall), Fay (Emily Langham) and Nancy (Chloe Goodliffe), all tip-top.
Janie Dee is superb as Madame Dubonnet, the school’s louche headmistress, and ably supported by the spiky, spicy maid Hortense (Tiffany Graves, spiffing).
The plot, such as it is, sees the girls on a quest for a boy friend to accompany them to the grand ball at the end of term.
When Polly meets messenger boy Tony (Dylan Mason), she pretends to be a poor secretary, unaware that he is the runaway son of Lord and Lady Brocklehurst (Adrian Edmondson doing his best to out-roué Leslie Phillips, and Issy van Randwyck impersonating Hyacinth Bouquet).
Wires are crossed, heartbreak beckons and secrets are uncovered in the nick of time. It is as if Gilbert & Sullivan had written Thoroughly Modern Millie.
The songs are lyrically adroit and marvellously singable and Matthew White brings out the best in his largely young cast. Bill Deamer’s choreography is a forensic reproduction of the period; given the athletically challenging
nature of the Charleston, the dance sequences are perhaps overly ambitious, though the cast perform with gusto.
But too much Broadway polish would undermine its intrinsically English charm.White maintains the bravura innocence of it all.Absolutely ripping.