More a drizzle than a real downpour of entertainment, Paul Kerryson's stage version of the MGM classic is big, handsome and rather dull. It almost entirely lacks joie de vivre. When the original film is as good and as famous as this one, there is little point transposing it to the stage unless the stage can add something to it. There is even less point in doing it when it has already been done rather well in recent memory: Jude Kelly's West Yorkshire Playhouse production transferred to the National a few years back.
Make 'Em Laugh is the nifty little number sung by film star Don Lockwood's best friend Cosmo Brown, and it is advice that Kerryson might well have heeded in a production where even the comic turn of Ronni Ancona as Lina Lamont, the silent film star with a voice like fingernails on chalkboard, seems laboured.
Adam Cooper, so good in On Your Toes, never really finds his feet or a personality as Don Lockwood, while Josefina Gabrielle as love interest Kathy Selden is insipid. Simon Coulthard as Cosmo comes off best - he has fun, so we have fun, and his loose-limbed rubber hoofing style often looks more relaxed, and is certainly more engaging than Cooper's.
The entire evening feels as if everyone is trying too hard. Cooper's choreography is safe rather than satisfying and lacks sparkle and wit; Robert Innes-Hopkins' design is uncharacteristically heavy and bland, and Paul Kerryson's production is so slow you sometimes fear it may shudder to a halt. Even the water tanks for the big number had an incontinence attack in protest.
There is something wrong with a live stage show when the bits you look forward to are the filmed inserts, and this evening fails the crucial test for the success of old musicals: it doesn't make you want to rush out and put a down payment on tap dancing lessons.
· Until September 4. Box office: 020-7863 8000.
