All Bob’s Women

Published Wednesday 25 June 2008 at 11:50 by Mark Shenton

Only one thing is consistent in the arrival of a biliously bad new Italian-written musical All Bob’s Women at the Arts Theatre - it maintains this venue’s currently unassailable reputation for hosting total duds, following in the ignoble footsteps of The Viewing Room and Haunted. But at least the run is being buried behind the main evening slot of the Tony-winning Broadway import of The Two and Only.

Otherwise, the show is all over the place in (lack of) style, content and pace, and could alternately be called The Five and Only, as it revolves around a would-be stud trying - and failing - to juggle five women simultaneously, variously identifying himself as Ron, Robin, Roger… and Sue, as he does so. Unfortunately, there is little point or shape to any of this, as Romy Padovano’s musical - with its banal ditties masquerading as songs - flounders around hopelessly in pursuit of comic engagement.

Matters aren’t helped by a clumsily focused production, which in Russell Labey’s staging, which I saw in preview, is full of missed cues and too many flat notes. The spirited cast try to keep their enthusiasm up even as the hero spends most of it with his trousers down, and even that wasn’t enough to raise my severely waning energy.

Amy Booth-Steel, the first Nancy to be voted out of “I’d Do Anything”, should have done anything to vote herself out of this sorry excuse for a new musical.