What is it about Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend? It ran for over 2,000 performances in the 1950s and keeps on going. Its appeal, I suspect, lies in the way it re-creates the tone and style of 1920s musicals with a sophisticated innocence; neither camp nor knowing, it needs to be played, as Ian Talbot's Regent's Park revival proves, with genuine affection for the period.
Its plot is dutifully daffy: poor little rich girl Polly Browne falls in love with disguised toff Tony, at Madame Dubonnet's finishing school in Nice. Wilson's music and lyrics capture perfectly the flavour of the 1920s. There are echoes of Coward in A Room in Bloomsbury, of Vincent Youmans in I Could Be Happy With You and even of early Cole Porter in the notion of Europe as a sexy, sunlit utopia.
Wilson's numbers retain their perennial butterfly charm but it's the dance numbers that give the show an extra charge. Bill Deamer's choreography covers everything from tangos to tap; it literally achieves lift-off in Won't You Charleston With Me. This is largely because of the extraordinary Summer Strallen, who, as Maisie, combines period pertness with some of the highest kicks you could ever wish to see - her legs achieve the perpendicular splendour of the Eiffel Tower.
If I have any gripe, it is that amplification distorts perspective. I can well understand that, in a large arena such as Regent's Park, sound enhancement is necessary, but it lends all the voices a uniform volume and intensity. That said, Rachel Jerram and Joshua Dallas as the young lovers admirably avoid archness and look as if they might have stepped straight out of an illustrated magazine of the 1920s. Talbot legitimately allows himself the fun of playing the lubricious aristo, Lord Brockhurst, who claims that "a fiddle that's old is more in tune." Anna Nicholas lends Madame Dubonnet the right touch of French polish and Steven Pacey as her one-time lover, Percival Browne, suavely announces: "I was a fool to pretend the old Percy was dead." You could say it's a measure of the tact of Talbot's pleasurable revival, and its respect for Wilsonian innocence, that the line is delivered by Pacey with absolute po-faced sincerity.
· Until September 10. Box office: 08700 601 811.
