First a Girl

The last in a series of German musicals transposed into English (and later remade with Julie Andrews as Victor/Victoria). Matthews is, as usual, an aspiring seamstress whose singing and dancing ambitions are fulfilled only after a sequence of sexual shenanigans. In Evergreen she won fame and fortune by impersonating her granny. Here, doing a Tootsie in reverse, she resorts to playing a female impersonator - with understandably convincing results. Saville doesn't quite get his Busby Berkeley act together, and an aura of inane innocence keeps at bay the interesting undertones of the plot. But for an English musical, this is tight, professional and unpretentious, and Matthews has a winsome vitality which is irresistible.