The cause of the West End straight play is hardly likely to be advanced by this needless US import by Richard Alfieri. It charts, with acerbic cuteness, the growing affection between a gay dance tutor and a tetchy Florida widow over the course of six lessons: I let out a sigh of relief that she hadn't signed on for 12.
Lily, is "a tight-arsed old biddy" whose life has been cramped by her marriage to a Southern Baptist minister. Michael, the tutor, is an ex-Broadway chorus-boy soured by professional failure and the death of his former lover. Out of their shared testiness and solitude, an improbable friendship develops as they work their way from forties swing to contemporary dance.
Narrative predictability combines with lurking sentimentality. And the only mild pleasure in an evening thin-textured to the point of invisibility is the performance of Billy Zane as Michael. Dressing appropriately for each dance-session, he has a mercurial swagger. Even though the character protests against sexual stereotyping, he makes the most of Alfieri's wisecracks, such as the definition of romance as "just a 50s word for sex". Claire Bloom has a much harder task reconciling us to the rebarbative Lily, and not even the climactic revelation of the character's sundry misfortunes can prevent us feeling that Lily's solitude is not surprising. She executes the dances, staged by Craig Revel Horwood, with hectic abandon, but her tendency to ride over the laugh-lines is ill-advised when there are so few.
· Until March 3. Box office: 0870 4000 626.
