The cause of the West End straight play is hardly likely to be advanced by this American 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 up for 12.
Lily, the client, accurately describes herself as "a tight-arsed old biddy" whose life has been cramped by her marriage to a southern Baptist minister. Michael, the tutor, is a former 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 through six lessons from 1940s swing to contemporary dance.
Predictability combines with lurking sentimentality. The only mild pleasure of the evening derives from the performance of Billy Zane as Michael. Dressing appropriately for each lesson - he arrives for the tango looking like a louche Argentinian waiter - Zane has a mercurial swagger and makes the most of Alfieri's waspish 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 altogether surprising. Admittedly, Bloom executes the dances, staged by Craig Revel Horwood, with a certain hectic abandon, but her tendency to ride over the laugh lines is ill-advised when they are so few and far between. I would rather remember this fine actor for her Nora and her Blanche DuBois than for her unmerry widow in Alfieri's piece of terpsichorean taradiddle.
· Box office: 0870 4000 626. A version of this review appeared in later editions of yesterday's paper.
