Anything Goes – Kilworth House Theatre

Lorna Want and Matthew Goodgame in Anything Goes at Kilworth House Theatre, Lutterworth

Anything Goes continues at the Kilworth House Theatre, Lutterworth until 1 September.

If you’ve never seen a musical at Kilworth House Theatre, my advice is to get down there pronto.

Based in the grounds of a well-to-do country hotel scarcely five miles from the Lutterworth (south Leicestershire) junction off the M1, Kilworth has everything going for it.

It mounts at least half-a-dozen in-house musicals a year, interspersed with other theatre events. The beautiful design and infrastructure – not just the superbly spacious, comfy auditorium and cleverly conceived sets – make the jaw drop.

It’s one of those rare venues where someone seems to have thought of everything. It draws big audiences from a wide catchment area and with mesmerising shows nets a laudably across-the-range social mix.

They all love a good show. Which is what Kilworth’s strikingly hands-on, enviably gifted (and many of them regular) production team serves up, time and again. Think Rodgers or Loewe or Leonard Bernstein, they tackle it all. Triumphantly.

Or think Cole Porter: Anything Goes is enjoying a riveting new production. Musical director Garth Hall has conducted a host of Kilworth’s successes, and this – where he holds his enthusiastic players stylishly under control (more, I felt, than in the recent My Fair Lady), enabling Porter’s (and his arrangers’) attractive textures to shine through – may well be one of his best.

Mitch Sebastian seems not just a gem of a director, more like a dramatic genius. He is behind many of Kilworth’s recent successes (Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls, Me and My Girl), as well as the hugely intelligently directed Henry Higgins-Eliza Doolittle trysts this summer, in which his wonderful choreographing of the extras, not least, was beyond praise.

So who are the stars? Sebastian ensures it’s just about everyone. Almost every number registers, every entry or little (as it were) off-camera vignette means something; every witty aside counts. Clever touches at the end of each act speak reams.

Richard Kent’s Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, the unlikely English aristocratic suitor who wins the near-unwinnable Reno Sweeney (here, glorious Kara Lane), ensures that his hilarious aria (‘The Gypsy in Me’) is really worth waiting for.

Kilworth traditionally serves up corkers, not just capitalising on but maybe generating new stars. Matthew Goodgame’s Billy Crocker partners Reno elegantly in ‘You’re the Top’, and pairs up well with Lorna Want’s exquisite Hope Harcourt. But he shines more still in Billy’s sundry gangster disguises in which he is abetted by the impossible Moonface Martin, played by the fabulous character actor, but also noteworthy vocalist, Nic Greenshields (‘Be Like the Bluebird’).

Others shone. Gary Davis as the three-sheets-to-the-wind oceanliner skipper is a treat, mainly because he finds kaleidoscopic ways of being drunk. With Victoria Hay’s intermediary Erma, Elizabeth Elvin’s comic Harcourt mother and Kit Benjamin’s hapless, bags of money Elisha Whitney, this ship swishes through the waters. Credit to terrific teamwork. Roll on (or steam on) the next one.

 Roderic Dunnett

www.kilworthhouse.co.uk/theatre