In many ways it is a perfect fit. Take a film that's become a camp classic thanks to the diva performances of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, sprinkle it with songs to add to the flamboyance, and stage it with old-style poise and pizzazz. It's hard to think of a more celebratory way to herald the arrival of Glasgay, the city's festival of queer culture.
Performed on an imposing two-level art-deco rotunda, Kenny Miller's production has the larger-than-life swagger so deeply associated with this theatre. The costumes are extravagant, the acting crisply mannered and the songs hauntingly supplemented by the operatic voice of Damaris Chalmers, representing the "spirit of Hollywood".
Andrea Miller's Baby Jane Hudson, the alcoholic ex-child star riven by jealousy and regret, and Karen Mann's Blanche, the sister crippled in a car accident, are impassioned visions of neurotic spinsterhood. They put their own stamp on the sibling rivalry and are uninhibited by the memory of their screen rivals.
The problem is that it is just not a very good musical. Created by Lee Pockriss (score), Hal Hackady (lyrics) and Henry Farrell (book and author of the novel), the show has two shortcomings. First is the music. It is not the songs, which are generally witty and sweetly melodic, if not especially memorable; it is that their presence slows down the plot and diminishes the tension. Only when they comment on Baby Jane's showbiz delusions - as in the delirious Las Vegas fantasy that begins the second half - do they seem central to the action.
Second is that by focusing so much on Baby Jane, the show underplays the gothic melodrama that gave Robert Aldrich's film an X certificate in 1962. The true horror of this story is in Blanche's helpless confinement, but on stage we feel too little of her fear, leaving us with an aimless display of her sister's drunken histrionics.
· Until November 12. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
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