The setting for this warm, slightly too sweet pint of theatrical nostalgia is Eric’s Club A Go Go, on a Saturday night, 1964. The miniskirts are out in force but the sexual politics are still in corsets. This 1989 musical from the Heather brothers is in every sense a backward glance, both at a lost decade, and the pained pleasures of adolescent love. It describes a yawning gender chasm, and then invites a motley cabal of characters to trip themselves up, attempting to traverse it.
Slyly riffing the most memorable tunes of the decade, the show works best when at its most outlandish. The Sonny and Cher spoof is priceless, and a tremulous ballad to premature ejaculations hits its mark. John Plews’s spirited revival zips along, too, at a furious pace, his young cast are pitch-perfect and uniformly impressive and Racky Plews choreographs the ensemble numberswith eye-popping pizzazz.
But despite that polish, the musical remains artistically lacklustre, revealing neither the nuanced truths of young love nor any real insight into the decade whose music it so freely pilfers. Admirably diverting, this night never truly dazzles.