'By Jeeves' at the Landor Theatre

I think it would be true to say I'm not a massive Andrew Lloyd Webber fan. His faux rock in the seventies and faux opera in the eighties mostly left me cold with the two notable exceptions of Phantom and Evita. However, if you're going to riff on a style or composer then creating some faux Coward is going to be much more to my taste. And the score for 'By Jeeves' does, thankfully, have a lot of that inspiration.

Having not seen the nineties West End production, I'm not sure how much of the framing device of the village hall recital is new but, given the history of the show, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had been at least highly tweaked. In the small space of the Landor the setting comes into it's own. And the multiple part playing of the cast allows for pantomimic scenery chewing when telling the story and a look of faint embarrassment when the weaknesses of the score become a little too obvious.

The hard working cast really throw themselves into making the evening as silly as possible - the car journey being an especial pleasure. But even they can't quite carry us over the fact that the story just runs out at the end. The final medley - although brilliantly handled - seems almost like a desperate attempt to give the piece the finale it so severely lacked. And appearing as the characters from the Wizard of Oz did nothing for me.

With such sterling work from all participants it seems unfair to pick out anyone in particular but I enjoyed David Menkin's mugging disgracefully during the group numbers and Charlotte Mills' enthusiastic tap dancing was very funny.

High marks should go to Kevin Trainor keeping the whole thing ticking on as Bertie but, overall, it's a bumpy piece. Moments of absolute brilliance just go to highlight how long some of the weaker sections hang around. Well worth popping along to see though - much in common with 'Salad Days' (recently revived at the Riverside Studios) it's a particularly British bit of whimsey that doesn't try to do anything more serious than make you smile.

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