It is a long way from paradise, but you would have to be a complete grouch not to fall for the charms of this musical set in Harlem's black community in the 1950s. Here in the local bar, surrounded by his friends, Jesse Semple is trying to grow up and achieve maturity but keeps being distracted from his one true love - sweet but strait-laced Joyce - by the attentions of good time girl, Zarita, who has more wiggle in her walk than Marilyn Monroe.
Written by the black poet Langston Hughes, the book is for the most part romantic piffle, but David Martin's alluring score moves through jazzy riffs to the desolate blues and has some soul-stealing, foot-stamping moments of such ebullience that it makes you feel happy to be alive. The whole thing is delivered by a sensational cast and includes show-stopping turns from Clive Rowe as the lovelorn Melons and Ruby Turner as the larger-than-life object of his affections. This pair know how to put the viva into diva.
If the show lacks sophistication, and Hughes doesn't seem overly concerned about perpetuating the black stereotypes that one of his character's criticises, there are signs here of an awakening black consciousness: Semple notes that no black man would make it on to the front page of the newspaper unless he had committed a terrible crime or seen a UFO. In one of the evening's best scenes, starving guitar player Gitfiddle is beaten up by the police for daring to play on the street. His bluesy rejoinder is a lament for all the injustices meted out by white people on the black community. It is a little show that hails from a far away and more innocent era, but director Josette Bushell-Mingo's production plays to its strengths and ensures that every single character is a character. Not heavenly, but rather nice.
·Booking until March 2005. Box office: 0870 060 6632.
