Paul Webb's one-man play has two clear aims: to recapture the lost musical world of Ivor Novello and to remind us of the post-war witch-hunt against theatrical homosexuals. Surprisingly it is with the first that it really succeeds, thanks to an excellent performance from Garth Bardsley - under Sheridan Morley's deft direction - who can genuinely sing.
He plays a chorus boy turned window dresser who, on the eve of a court appearance for soliciting in 1953, reminisces about the glory days of musical theatre. Hailing from the Welsh valleys, he found himself swept into the arms of Ivor Novello and into the Ruritanian world of musicals such as Glamorous Night and The Dancing Years. And this gives Bardsley the excuse to sing and play some of Novello's romantic standards as well as witty revue-numbers such as And Her Mother Came Too. Novello's theatrical world died with him in 1951. But we are here pleasurably reminded of his exceptional melodic gifts.
More contentiously, Webb's play suggests the law singled-out gay theatre folk for persecution. Novello was famously imprisoned for violating wartime petrol rationing and Gielgud was arrested in 1953. What Webb fails to mention is that many non-theatre people were also cruelly exposed by an outdated law: it was, in fact, the trial of a young peer that caused most public noise in 1953. And, while Webb singles out the then home secretary for blame, he doesn't mention the singularly homophobic Director of Public Prosecutions or indeed the hysterically vindictive popular press of the early 1950s.
Special pleading aside, this is a very enjoyable 90-minute show that successfully evokes the vanished world of Novello - one in which a Welsh romantic tapped into the popular hunger for escapist fantasy. I suspect Novello's musicals are now unrevivable; but, as Bardsley's light tenor pleasingly proves, he works very well in judicious anthology. Better a touch of Ivor than The Full Monty.
· Until April 6. Box office: 020-7287 2875.
