Film noir has long attracted theatre-makers, from Larry Gelbart in City of Angels to Roger Michell and Richard Maher in Private Dick. Phil Willmott's Femme Fatale, though eventually deviating into gothic horror and sci-fi, offers two hours of knowing, jovial, rib-nudging pastiche.
Willmott starts by following the noir rules: we have a trench-coated Chandler, a wisecracking editor, a "Black Widow" with a penchant for ageing plutocrats and an amnesiac chambermaid who just happens to turn up at the scene of a number of grisly murders. But once we get into the world of a genetic freak who mutates into a human spider at midnight, we seem to have left the shadowy urban milieu of Howard Hawks, Fritz Lang and Edward Dmytryk far behind.
Only purists will object, however; Willmott's wit and the songs he has co-written with Stefan Bednarczyk keep the show very much alive. The Black Widow, we learn, is on the run from justice for "grabbing rich, ailing millionaires by their will and testaments". And the amnesiac Delores has a strangely perfect memory for movies, crying out: "Don't leave me all alone like Ida Lupino in High Sierra." The songs, too, perpetuate the mood of campy jocularity. I particularly liked a lament by the once-ambitious B-movie bit-part players who end up as "the bozos RKO can kick around".
Ted Craig's production hits the right note - literally so in the case of the versatile six-strong cast who, when not performing, nip behind a gauze curtain to play piano, trumpet or double bass. Rosie Jenkins has exactly the right dizzy, breathless charm as the chambermaid. There is staunch support from Tim Frances as a succession of menacing heavies and from Kit Benjamin as an affected English butler in the lisping style of Eric Blore.
It all adds up to a jolly successor to this theatre's long line of Dick Barton spoofs, even if it makes you wonder whether modern theatre isn't becoming dangerously dependent on the movies.
· Until February 20. Box office: 020-8680 4060.
