Back at the Tricycle, where this story of life among "coloured" entertainers living in South Africa's District Six during the 1950s was premiered in 1999, David Kramer and Taliep Petersen's musical is an exuberant evening set against the background of apartheid. As a toe-tapping experience, it is unbeatable; as a theatrical one, it is a mite on the thin side.
Essentially, it is a series of songs that tell the story of Kat Diamond and the harmony group that he founded with his friends in the multiracial, multicultural Cape Town residential area before the government declared it a whites-only area in the mid-1960s.
The evening takes the form of a memory play told by the elderly Kat, now a shoeshine boy working the streets, who looks back at his younger self. When the two sing side by side, there is a real emotional tingle.
Apartheid provides the background to the rise of the group known as Kat and Carvellas. It also causes their fall, as the "coloured" Lucy falls in love with their white manager and the two are charged under the immorality act that forbade interracial sexual relationships.
But, curiously, it is often incidental to the evening, which is really no more than an excuse for some nice songs performed with swagger and dash. The show cries out for more detail about life in District Six, what it was like for the group performing at the whites- only Claridges hotel (during the day they had to work as bellhops), and the way apartheid touched everyday life.
Provided you realise that that kind of consideration is beyond the scope of a show in the musical-comedy mould, you'll almost certainly have great fun - not least because the cast are dynamite performers, full of boundless energy and charm.
· Until February 8. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
