Anything Goes review: The new cast appear to approach the material with unrestrained enthusiasm

Anything Goes

Barbican Theatre, London                              Until October 31, 2hrs 40mins

Rating:

First seen in 1934, Cole Porter’s musical offered lavish escapism in tough times – and it seems our needs haven’t changed all that much.

This revival by director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall, first seen on Broadway in 2011, is packing out the Barbican, winning standing ovations, and already extending its run.

It’s easy to see why. Set aboard a luxury liner filled with mixed-up lovers, gangsters, showgirls, and hectically disguised and misidentified stowaways, Anything Goes is an appropriate title for a plot that is daft beyond words, and flimsy as the divine silk frocks everyone floats about in.   

But then comes along a huge, stage-filling tap number, or a blissful comic duet – Porter’s playful lyrics are still witty, and Marshall effortlessly brings out the musical’s funny bones as well as its potential for spectacle – and you’ll forgive anything.

It is impossible not to be swept away in the old-fashioned good fun of it all.

And this production has a major star at its helm: Sutton Foster won a Tony for her performance as Reno Sweeney, and it’s abundantly clear why.

She elevates every scene she’s in, with a performance that is so captivating because she seems to be having such a damn good time. Her own comedy chops are extremely strong too; Foster can dance like a dream, then switch to ridiculous on the turn of a heel.

The only slight problem is that, as the wise-cracking yet love-lorn show girl Reno, she’s so much more dynamic than our hero Billy’s actual love interest, Hope. Samuel Edwards presents the self-absorbed Billy with louche charm, which just about stays on the right side of smarmy, but his romance with Hope (Nicole-Lily Baisden) is blandly sugary rather than sparky.

Elsewhere, the new British cast appear to approach the material with the unrestrained enthusiasm of a group of sailors on shore leave. Felicity Kendal squeaks and squawks across the stage as Hope’s gold-digging mother, while Robert Lindsay appears to have the time of his life playing a gangster, eyes twinkling bright enough to navigate by.