On the Town, Leonard Bernstein's fable about the amatory shenanigans of three sailors during a 24-hour shore leave in New York is one of the more important musicals of the 20th century.
The piece has become something of a conundrum, however, since most of us know it from the 1949 MGM film rather than from Bernstein's original version, first seen on Broadway in 1944.
The film, made in an atmosphere of postwar optimism, is an ebullient affair - a cinematic travelogue through a New York teeming with energy and promise.
The stage show, however, is a much darker piece. New York can be a "lonely town", where emotional dreams can be destroyed in a flash. The sailors' girls realise that time is racing away and agree sadly to "catch up some other time", aware the men may never return.
Above all, the distant war - to which New York seems oblivious - inevitably threatens the sailors' lives.
Jude Kelly's new production for English National Opera is strong on the work's dark side. At the start, artillery fire shakes the building as the outline of the men's ship is seen in the distance. The sailors drift round New York, not noticing billboards proclaiming a growing number of casualties.
Only Gabey, the romantic idealist, is aware of both the city's danger and the military threat and, in the main dance sequence, dreams that Ivy, the girl he fancies, will one day be his widow.
The production has its fair share of problems. Kelly is so interested in existential and military jitters that she sometimes loses sight of the sheer exhilaration and fun of the sailors' romps round the city.
New York, meanwhile, is curiously ill-defined. The main design references for Robert Jones's set would seem to be Lewis Hines' photographs of men atop girders constructing the Empire State Building.
Finally, there's Stephen Mear's uneven choreography, some of it derivative: Gabey sings Lonely Town with what appears to be part of the brothel scene from Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling going on behind him.
There are some terrific performances, however.
The three sailors are wonderful with Aaron Lazar's touchingly naive Gabey sharply differentiated from Adam Garcia's pragmatic, sexy Chip and Tim Howar's randy if nerdish Ozzie. Lucy Schaufer packs a formidable vocal punch as Claire de Loone, Ozzie's nympho maniacal anthropologist girlfriend, and there are impressive cameos from Andrew Shore as Claire's put-upon fiancee and Sylvia Syms as an alcoholic music teacher.
But it doesn't cohere. Kelly is right to remind us of the work's dark side but she overstates her case, leading to an evening uneven in tone and inspiration.
· Until April 19. Box Office 020 7632 8300
