By Terry Sweeney
The dazzling stage adaptation of the classic 1935 film of Top hat, which starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, was first staged in 2013 on the West End and won the 2013 Olivier Award for Best New Musical that year. It also won the Evening Standard Award of Best Night Out.
Now award-winning American director and choreographer Kathleen Marshal who won the Tony and Olivier Awards for ‘Anything Goes’, has come to the UK to stage this brand-new production of Top Hat, which is on the Liverpool Empire this week.
We first meet Broadway star Jerry Travers (Phillip Attmore: Hello Dolly-Broadway, in the Fred Astaire role) as he finishes his Broadway theatre run with a scintillating song and dance routine to ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’. Jerry brings the house down and then meets up with Impresario and producer Horace Harwick (James Hume) to plan his secret return to London to star in Horace’s new production.
What ensues is a star-crossed romantic relationship with model Dale Tremont (Amara Okereke My Fair Lady-West End in the Ginger Rogers role) once he arrives in London.
Jerry meets up with Horace and his dancing in Horace’s hotel suite disturbs Dale who is trying to sleep in the room below. Dale eventually comes up to Horace’s suite to complain and Dale and Jerry meet for the first time. Jerry falls for Dale immediately, but as always in Hollywood movies or Broadway shows the course of true love never runs smooth. The plot in Top Hat hinges on mistaken identity.
The plot is further complicated when Horace travels down to Venice for the weekend to meet his wife Maud (Sally Ann Triplett), Dale’s best friend, taking Jerry with him. Dale is in Venice at the invitation of Alberto Beddini (Alex Gibson-Giorgio), who has hired her to wear his dresses and impress the rich international clientele in Venice with his creations.
Add in Horace’s manservant Bates (James Clyde in fantastic comic form) and this sets the scene for his sets or Irving Berlin’s timeless classics like Puttin’ on the Ritz, I’m putting all my eggs in one basket’, ‘Cheek to Cheek’, ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’, and ‘Top Hat White Tie and Tails’, against a backdrop of mistaken identity and comic mistakes.
Will Jerry leave his bachelor days behind forever, and will Dale realise Jerry is not the philanderer she suspects him to be?
The two stars, and Berlin’s music, carry the show, with fantastic vocals and dancing, supported by a fabulous chorus line of singers and dancers and sparkling choreography on the big set-pieces. Horace and Maud add witty dialogue, comedy and pathos to the plot, and Bates and Alberto add broad comedy and great character acting.
As Irving Berlin aptly says:
“There may be trouble ahead.
But while there’s moonlight, and music.
And love and romance,
Let’s face the music and dance.”
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