It is hard to imagine how Burt Bacharach's only attempt at an original Broadway musical could possibly fail. After all, the credit list - lyrics by Hal David from the book by Neil Simon after the film by Billy Wilder - reads like an attempt to squeeze as many icons of American popular culture on to the same poster as possible.
Yet Promises Promises has had to wait 37 years for this first major revival, which perhaps indicates that so many great talents may have cancelled one another out. Or maybe that a world waiting for Andrew Lloyd Weber simply found Bacharach's experiment with the Broadway muzak-al too understated by half.
Taking its theme from Wilder's classic comedy the Apartment, the action follows the attempt of luckless insurance salesman Chuck Baxter to climb the corporate ladder by subletting his Manhattan pad to randy executives. Inevitably, he falls for a nice girl from the canteen who is already paying house calls on the arm of his boss.
Angus Jackson's svelte production, expertly choreographed by Adam Cooper, celebrates a charmingly innocent ideal of corporate America - a world of purring IBM machines and flirtatious secretaries. Designer Robert Innes Hopkins plants an elevator on stage, a smart move given that lifts may be thought of as Bacharach's natural environment. The score tinkles away pleasantly, offering two modes between laid-back and supine - with the exception of the glitzy Christmas number, which is like a representation of the most dissolute office party you've ever seen, only with slicker choreography.
The leading roles are very pleasingly filled. Richard Frame has just the right amount of transparent charm as the perennially uncharismatic hero, Chuck. Emma Williams is no better than she ought to be as the sweetly solicitous Fran. And Martin Turner has the furtive, furrowed look of the serial adulterer as the disreputable executive, Sheldrake.
Perhaps it's the very ordinariness of these nine-to-five characters that works against them. We look to musicals for transformation and wonder; Promises Promises gives us an office. But if Bacharach the stage writer remains almost too insouciant for his own good, the Crucible's show is still the perfect way to enjoy some festive schmaltz.
· Until January 21. Box office: 0114-249 6000.
