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The Boy Friend - York Musical Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, 9 – 19 May 2007

By Charles Hutchinson

IT is never too late to fall in love with the frolicking, frothy, fabulous fun of Sandy Wilson's pastiche of Twenties high society, The Boy Friend.

Riviera romance is in the air for the flapper-dressed girls at the Villa Caprice finishing school for young ladies, run by the grand dame Madame Dubonnet (Moira Murphy), who is so flamboyantly French to every last inch, like the ever-dramatic maid Hortense (Felicity Walsh).

The young ladies of York Musical Theatre Company are as playful as you could wish, all fluttering eyes, stylised movements and cut-glass accents and, of course, they may be more "thereabouts" than "17 or thereabouts", but Wilson's musical gives room for a little adult knowing in the playing, and Anna Mitchelson's long-limbed Dulcie and Toni Feetenby's wide-eyed but not entirely innocent Maisie are particularly quick to catch the comic tone.

This show marks Toni's return to the company after having a baby girl last year and, as ever, she lifts the show with her zestful singing and dancing, both with John Haigh's preppy Bobby Van Husen in Won't You Charleston With Me? and all the boys in Safety In Numbers.

Director and musical director Paul Laidlaw has picked light and pretty leads for the sweet romance of millionaire's daughter Polly Browne (Caroline Chambers) and candy-striped messenger boy Tony (Sam Coulson, with his cigarette-card good looks and old-school silver screen manner).

Chambers' Polly moves back and forth between sunshine and clouds, plucking heartstrings as she sings the duets I Could Be Happy With You with Coulson and Poor Little Pierette with Murphy's Madame Dubonnet (whose vintage singing voice you would swear was from a crackly 78).

John Ramsden's kindly Percival Browne is classically upright, and the best fun of the night is the delightfully effervescent billing and cooing of Jim Welsman's skirt-chasing Lord Brockhurst and Anna Mitchelson's Dulcie in It's Never Too Late To Fall In Love.

Ensemble numbers are lively and lovely, benefiting from a stage not cluttered by an excess of chorus roles, especially in the swimwear parade of Sur Le Plage, which really makes a splash.
Laidlaw's gladsome, handsome show is as pink and bubbly and dizzying as champagne.