Cop these robbers while you can

THEATRE

TEDDY

Southwark Playhouse, SE1

IT’S A rare and precious thing to spot unmistakable star quality on one of our stages, but that is what this delightful play-with-music offers. Just two years ago Jennifer Kirby made a stage debut of some note as a feisty Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Now she is nothing less than mesmerising in a role that couldn’t be more different, as a tough-talking, guntoting teddy girl in Elephant and Castle in 1956. Catch her while you can, for she’s unlikely to be gracing London’s fringe theatres for much longer.

Kirby, who makes 17-year-old shop-girl Josie vulnerable, determined and a whole lot of edgy fun, is magnificent, but the rest of Teddy is a treat too. It’s a cherishable concept for starters — just two actors, Kirby and Joseph Prowen as fortuitously monikered teddy boy Teddy and a (fictional) four-piece band, Johnny Valentine and the Broken Hearts. Original songs not only pepper the action but also provide the material for a foot-tapping pre-show mini-gig. Playwright Tristan Bernays and songwriter Dougal Irvine have hit on a winning formula.

Bernays’s lyrical drama is, fittingly, as strutting and peacocking as the teds themselves, as they dress for that all-important Saturday night on the town. It’s a danger-flecked evening from the off and once Josie and Teddy meet the stakes are raised further. They’re unflappable at robbing a pawn shop, but when it comes to a slow dance, they’re an awkward muddle.

Eleanor Rhode directs with pizzazz and Max Dorey’s set cleverly has Josie and Teddy shinning up and down ladders as their picaresque adventures unfold. Energy and invention abound. Remarkable.