What strikes one most about this Harlem musical by Langston Hughes and David Martin is its guileless innocence. Although set in 1957 - when Arkansas' Governor Faubus sent in state troops to deny black children admission to Little Rock high school - the only reference to national events comes in a newspaper headline.
For the most part the inhabitants of Paddy's Bar are content to sing their troubles away, which they do terrifically.
You could excuse Hughes's detachment from current events in that he based the show on a 1953 collection of stories about his popular black hero, Jesse B Semple: a comic Everyman who suffers the daily frustrations of his race. But the emphasis, in a show clearly designed for Broadway consumption, is less on Jesse's sudden sacking from an industrial plant than on his emotional problems. Yearning for a divorce from his estranged wife, he longs to marry the good-hearted, church-going Joyce. The only problem is that he is constantly drawn to Harlem's Paddy's Bar where he is ceaselessly vamped by the fun-loving Zarita.
As a story, it is both sketchy and predictable: you know that when Zarita turns up with the local barflies at Jesse's bedsit, Joyce is bound to enter unexpectedly.
And it is typical of Hughes's somewhat Pollyanna-ish approach to social reality that in the end Jesse gets a job, a wife and everything his heart desires.
Where the show scores is in its portrait of communal life in a Harlem bar. In Rob Howell's excellent design, it looks like a set for The Iceman Cometh but the emphasis is on music rather than misery. The highpoint comes when Clive Rowe's pelvically thrusting Melon joins forces with Ruby Turner's ostensibly reluctant Miss Mamie to sing a richly comic seduction number, Here I Come. But that is closely followed by a whirling tap dance by Jason Pennycooke who twirls chairs and leaps on bars with fantastic agility. And when the bar-denizens sing the blues there is resilience behind the heartache.
In Josette Bushell-Mingo's production the numbers are beautifully staged and Paul J Medford's choreography takes wing. And this is enough to make up for the slightly soppy love-story involving Rhashan Stone's Jesse and Cat Simmons's Joyce who you know will eventually get together.
As a portrait of Harlem life, even in the pre-Panther 1950s, the show seems somewhat rose-tinted. But as a free-flowing musical, demonstrating the depth of black talent in Britain today, it has a totally beguiling charm.
· Until April 12. Box office: 020-7928 6363.
