When the best-known version of a Broadway musical is a 1955 film starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, stage productions that follow have an unenviable task: no Sinatra to sing Luck Be a Lady, few extras, and stage sets only as convincing as small budgets can make them.
Given this, the Royal Lyceum's first production of a Broadway musical for more than a decade does well to succeed. There are moments of convincing New York swagger from the gangsters, gamblers and molls on the streets after midnight, some genuine comedy and a smoothly handled love affair between Sky Masterton and do-gooder Miss Sarah Brown. The stage might be too small to bring Broadway to life, but with lead performances ranging from impressively slick (Alasdair Harvey as Masterton and Fiona Steele as Brown) to affectionately engaging (Elaine C Smith's Adelaide, all Betty Boop meets pantomime dame), there is some escapist magic to the proceedings - which is what musicals are all about.
In the second act, where the big ensemble numbers take over, you forget all about rainy old Edinburgh outside as Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat, Luck Be a Lady and the Crap Game Dance all soar atmospherically, just as they should. Tom McGovern shines as the commitment-phobic Nathan Detroit, engaged to Miss Adelaide for 14 years. All he wants is to find a venue for the next crap game; all she wants is to have a "house and wallpaper and bookends".
The limits of the magic are to do with the production's physical scale and scope - the set presents a rather woeful New York - and some problems with sound. The microphones are set high to make all the voices powerful enough to root you to the spot, but they give out a maddening buzz between musical numbers and there are several audio clonks and clangs too. You forget these momentarily during numbers like A Bushel and a Peck, but the dream is dispelled when the singing stops. Without the dream, these are just ordinary men and women, not guys and dolls, bad boys and dreamy broads at play and in love.
Until April 21. Box office: 0131-248 4848.
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