The Stage

The Kissing-Dance

Published Monday 28 March 2011 at 10:08 by Mark Shenton

After the undeserved West End failure of Love Story, it is good to have another show from Howard Goodall - to my mind (and ears) the British musical’s richest and most unexpectedly melodic writer. His tunes caress and capture the characters as well as the audience in an alternately firm and lilting embrace that hauntingly evokes emotion as well as exposition.

Gina Beck, Ian Virgo and Beverley Klein in The Kissing Dance at Jermyn Street Theatre Photo: Robert Workman

But while his music for The Kissing-Dance is typically rich, this musical adaptation of Oliver Goldsmith’s classic 18th-century comedy She Stoops to Conquer also succeeds triumphantly thanks to Charles Hart’s effervescent treatment of the play’s convoluted machinations of romantic matchmaking and misapprehensions. Hart’s lyrics are full of wit to match the wilfulness and determination of the characters, and it also frees Goodall of some of his tendency towards earnestness.

Originally written to commission for the large-scale cast and resources of the National Youth Music Theatre, Lotte Wakeham’s professional premiere production is a little squeezed on the tiny Jermyn Street stage, but she marshals a strong cast of 13 (who also provide their own resourceful but never intrusive musical accompaniment) with terrific brio.

It is also blessed with smart, funny performances across the board, with David Burt and Beverley Klein lending the Hardcastle parents a hilarious befuddlement, while Gina Beck as daughter Kate (reprising a role she created in the show’s original NYMT production) brings her radiant soprano to bewitch her handsome suitor Mr Marlow (Ian Virgo, another alumni of the NYMT, where he previously played Tony Lumpkin).