Where has this show been all our lives? Languishing under the shadow of Cabaret and Chicago, that's where. Those musicals might have made the names of John Kander and Fred Ebb, but Flora the Red Menace is the one that launched their career in 1965. And as James Brining's superb production testifies, the neglect has been our loss. Still, what's a 40-year wait, when its Scottish premiere is this good?
Produced a year before Cabaret - and substantially revised for a 1987 off-Broadway revival - Flora the Red Menace is set in the American Depression of the 1930s and concerns nothing less than capitalist greed, communist orthodoxy, the unionisation of the work place and the freedom of the individual. All this plus song, dance and a heart-melting love story. The star of the show is Flora Meszaros, a plucky New York fashion illustrator newly graduated and ready to change the world. When she falls for Harry, a stuttering communist with a keen sense of justice, she joins the party, but falls foul of its authoritarian regulations. With brilliant dramatic daring, the musical sets a forceful socialist agenda while pointing out the limitations of far-left ideology. Remarkably, it achieves this with humanity, romance and a fine set of tunes.
Such ambition could sink a lesser company, but the Dundee ensemble tackles it with equal parts virtuosity and elan. Emily Winter, in the title role, is stunning: barely off the stage, she drives the production forward with unaffected energy, her acting matching the range of her singing, from the vigorous paean to individualism I Am Me to the heart-break of It's a Quiet Thing. Fabulous, too, are a full-voiced Richard Conlon as Harry and Ann Louise Ross as an obsessive communist activist whose theme tune is You Must Do More, a hilarious litany of her revolutionary work. With any luck, Dundee's ensemble structure will allow a long life for this production. It's too good for anything less.
· In rep until October 25. Box office: 01382 223530.
