Roaring times back in the '20s

The Boyfriend
Open Air Theatre

The Boyfriend has not aged since I saw him first in the Wyndham’s Theatre 52 years ago.
Sandy Wilson’s “homage to the musical of the 1920s” is the Park’s musical choice for this season and its vigour and vitality zip along like an expensive sports car heading south to the frivolous fleshpots of the Mediterranean.
Set in Madame Dubonnet’s finishing school for young English ladies just outside Nice, these upper-class girls are ripe for romance.
Fifteen musical numbers unfold like a roll of silk around the plot, which in part reminds you of Hello Hello. Polly Browne (Rachel Jerram) the daughter of heavy money creates a fictitious boyfriend for herself, while Tony (Joshua Dallas), has fled from his status-hungry parents Lord and Lady Brockhurst, and is posing as the humble messenger boy.
Both he and Sweet Polly are wary of fortune hunters. I’m not spoiling it by telling you true love, as always, prevails and sadness melts like morning mist.
Paul Farnsworth’s set is a picture postcard of elegance and costumes from cloche hats to one-piece male bathing costumes – to use a cliché – are a riot of colour.
Ian Talbot directs and plays Lord Brockhurst, singing and dancing to “it’s never too late to fall in love” an anthem of reassurance for people of my generation.
His lady wife Jennifer Piercey looked and behaved like the late Queen Mary, a delicious haughtiness often common to upper-class ladies of the period.
Julie Andrews played Poor Polly on Broadway and Twiggy made a bold thrust at it in the Ken Russell film but it is this version that rekindles that lightness of touch and the extravagance of the crazy 1920s.
One of my favourite numbers was I Could Be Happy With You. I would be more than happy to go again and share this joyous evening and be happy with them over and over again.

Until Sept 9
08700 601811

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