How love was intended to be

She Loves Me
Upstairs at the Gatehouse

WE’LL have Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the lazy Hollywood schemers thought to themselves.
Their characters will hate each other but unwittingly also have a blind date email relationship and eventually find out that, lo and behold, they fancy each other.
They start going steady and fall hopelessly in love. We’ll call it You’ve Got Mail and we’ll make a million.
Nobody will ever twig that all we’ve done is rip off the storyline to She Loves Me, a cosy musical about an unfolding romance in a perfume shop.
And they got away with it. Off those film, moguls went, the heist complete, laughing all the way to the bank. She Loves Me didn’t deserve that. A million times more respect is shown at the Upstairs At The Gatehouse theatre in Highgate, for a million times less money.
Here you are transported to Maraczek’s parfumerie in 1930s Budapest where men dance around in double-breasted suits while the girls twirl in fur coats and stockings.
No emails, the bickering leads have an anonymous telegram writing relationship. So by day Georg (Lincoln Preston) and Amalia (Julia G. Addison) quarrel in the shop, but at night they melt each other’s hearts with secret love letters.
Cute. And all rum fun too. This basic premise, so abused by Hanks and co, is spun out intelligently here, propped up with enough sub-plots to maintain interest during an epic first half which probably runs for at least 15 minutes too long.
Saul Reichlin is the wise skipper in an otherwise young team. He pulls things back together as Maraczek. Such a measured performer, one of his scenes leaves a lump in your throat.
There are not many knockout numbers but definitely enough stellar voices to do justice to a show stuffed with witty lyrics and twinkly melodies.
The quibbles are a bloated first half and an abrupt ending. It sometimes feels like it should be a winter warmer rather than a summer show. Not enough reasons to sit this one out, though.

Until August 12
020 8340 3488

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