When that other 1980s throwback Dirty Dancing last week became the fastest-selling West End ticket ever, Footloose was saddled with the second fiddle before it even began. But when you deploy the fiddle as amusingly as this - and I'm talking camp Stetson-and-spurs hoedown featuring Cowboy Bob and the Country Kickers - then who cares if it's second, third or 23rd fiddle?
Yes, Footloose the Musical is just as naff as the 1984 film. It pitches twinkle-toed Chicago schoolkid Ren McCormack into a Midwest smalltown whose Bible belt has been drawn several holes too tight. Ren "can't stand still", as he sings to his redneck classmates. But he's going to have to - dancing is banned in Bomont, since a freak dance-related accident five years ago poleaxed the local preacher's son.
The stage is set, then, for a confrontation between freedom (ie, the right to wear a hard hat and buff your pecs with baby lotion) and repression. It's a one-sided contest. Stephen McGann's Reverend Moore is gripped by a spiritual crisis: "If heaven can't help me, who can?" The devil, meanwhile - and the musical - has some mighty good tunes.
In Karen Bruce's production, the dialogue could be communicated by semaphore. And the resolution is pure schmaltz. But what schmaltz! Footloose's belief in letting go of sorrow and facing the future is uplifting, especially when related by likable young hoofers flinging one another around a stage. If I'd had a Stetson, I'd have hurled it in the air.
You can't always make out what Derek Hough as Ren is singing - but in every other particular his performance brings home the Kevin Bacon. Giovanni Spano, as his goofy sidekick Willard, steals the show with a sequence in which he miraculously learns to dance. It's all nonsense, of course, but life-affirming nonsense, which counsels those in search of heaven to leave the Good Book alone, and head for the nearest dancefloor. Amen to that!
· Until September 9. Box office: 0870 950 0935
