Designed to exploit the popularity of tango champions and Strictly Come Dancing regulars Vincent Simone and Flavia Cacace, this show is a curious hybrid: neither pure dance spectacle nor musical but an odd amalgam of both.
Ed Curtis has supplied a flimsy framework: a film noir pastiche, involving the murder of a 1940s Hollywood star. It gives Teddy Kempner, as a narrating lawyer, the chance to do endless meta-theatrical jokes on the lines of “She had everything a girl could want – including her own entrance music.” Abbie Osmon shimmers seductively, and adopts a Marilyn Monroe voice, as a gun-toting, night-club floozie. Meanwhile Oliver Darley croons a number of standards, such as the Mercer/Mancini Moon River, mostly written well after the supposed period.
But the story is mainly an excuse to display the expertise of Vincent and Flavia. They work their way through the rumba, the samba, the foxtrot and the paso doble before finally giving us the tango we’ve all been waiting for. This is an impressive affair that seems to be a form of surrogate sex and includes some extraordinary moves such as one in which Flavia places a lethal heel on Vincent’s unsuspecting calf.
Their dynamism is undeniable. She, with her tight helmet of cropped hair, and he, with his chunky Gene Kelly physique, cut a memorable dash. But their facial expressions barely change from number to number. One has the feeling of watching a formidable exhibition of skill rather than something that grows out of the supposed story. Directed and co-choreographed, along with the stars themselves, by Karen Bruce, the show could have profitably junked the plot and become a celebration of pure movement on the lines of Bob Fosse’s delirious Dancin’.
• Until 3 January. Box office: 020-7379 3367. Venue: Aldwych, London
• In pictures: Strictly Tinseltown: Vincent and Flavia’s ode to Hollywood
