A crisp, starched shirt of a show, this revue featuring some of Stephen Sondheim's greatest hits ends up looking pretty crumpled. For a start, it does not have Ned Sherrin as the narrator, which it desperately needs (this show had Christopher Cazenove, but you might end up with Angela Rippon, Barry Cryer or Les Dennis), and it is 30 years out of date.
I don't just mean that when it was compiled in 1976 Sondheim had yet to write some of his best shows, including Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park With George and Into the Woods (none of which are featured), but the revue format harks back to an era when people liked to take a little light entertainment with their steak and Black Forest gateau. On Sunday afternoon on Radio 2, or in a swankier setting, it might slip down easily causing minimal digestion problems. But in the seedy Venue it just looks like a never-ending audition.
By the time the cast had emoted all the way to I'm Still Here, I longed to leap to my feet and cry: "Yes, we bloody well are, too, and it's way past my bedtime." Only the opportunity to vote out the cast, reality-TV style, would have enlivened the proceedings.
In fact, the cast are a game trio of fine singers, although their diction needs a good press, and they are inclined to offer perky or pained with nothing much in between. But they work like demons to keep the songs upright; robbed of their dramatic structure, the tunes often seem like dangerously unstable buildings.
Unless you are about to sit an exam on the works of Stephen Sondheim, in which case you might find the evening instructive, I suggest you hop on the train to Derby, where you can see a decent revival of Merrily We Roll Along, and get a genuine sense of why Sondheim is rightly feted as a musical theatre genius.
· Until July 14. Box office: 0870 040 0046.
