Nothing to do with Christmas, and everything to do with Noël Coward, Alistair McGowan's compilation show of songs and verse does well if you like your theatre to sound like Sunday afternoon on Radio 4. Still, it's nicely put together: McGowan largely eschews impressions and is joined by Charlotte Page, who is particularly good at capturing the pain and bafflement that lurks behind these witty ditties. She has a beautiful voice, too. (The suave McGowan tends to go more for the Rex Harrison option.)
There are problems. It's at least 20 minutes too long, and feels overstretched in the second half. The extract from Private Lives sits uneasily, and is exposing, too, as if it's some kind of public audition for a full production. But on the whole, the show is cunningly constructed, so that songs and verse and stories neatly segue into each other – the restrained Mrs Mallory moving easily, for example, into the exquisite If Love Were All and Do I Believe?
There is perhaps something odd about how relentlessly heterosexual it is, when so much of the material is coded – though there is a beautifully delivered story of a general and his wife who gradually come to accept their son's homosexuality. The two hours are seeped in a lost past that is brought vividly to life in songs such as We Were Dancing, or Lie in the Dark and Listen, which conjures the hold-your-breath-moment as bombers fly overhead at night. It's a niche show for a niche audience, but reminds us that Coward had more than just a talent to amuse.
