Anything Goes – Barbican Theatre

Samuel Edwards, Sutton Foster and Robert Lindsay in Anything Goes at the Barbican. Picture: Tristram Kenton

Anything Goes continues at the Barbican Theatre, London until 31 October 2021.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

If anyone comes out of this remarkable revival of Anything Goes without a broad smile on their face, feeling ten times better than when they arrived and humming a Cole Porter classic, the probability is that they have already died and gone to heaven.

There may have been more pleasurable ways of spending two and a half hours in a theatre than with this incredibly silly but frequently hilarious and unquestionably tuneful musical but I am struggling to name them. This is pure, unadulterated entertainment.

Much of the kudos goes to director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall who ticks every box but each role in this wacky tale of the madcap shenanigans that go on aboard an ocean liner is wonderfully cast, Derek McLane’s sets are works of art, Jon Morrell’s glossy costumes are a sight for sore eyes, and musical director Stephen Ridley (complete with just-visible sailor’s hat!) and his 15 musicians must be having a ball playing these sophisticated Porter melodies.

Arriving at the perfect time with theatregoers desperate for a fix after 16 months in Covid purgatory, it was, as one of the songs says ‘Easy to Love’. And didn’t the full house show it with long standing ovations at the end of both acts and even after a show-stopping number or flamboyant dance routine.

It has been such an instant hit in preview that the run has been extended to the end of October so London is to get two weeks more of Sutton Foster, almost a legend on Broadway but here making her UK debut in the role of nightclub chanteuse Reno Sweeney that won her a second Tony for Best Actress in a Musical ten years ago.

Make no mistake this lady is a genuine STAR, not only with a capital S but also with a capital T, a capital A and a capital R. Whether singing up a storm, flashing a high-kicking leg in a dance routine or simply acting, she dominates the stage even in company with many of the best names in the business.

Her timing in the ‘Friendship’ routine with that grand old pro Robert Lindsay, playing “Public Enemy No. 13” Moonface Martin, and when duetting with Haydn Oakley, brilliant as the clueless Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, is beyond perfect. No doubt there will an Olivier coming her way to go with her two Tonys (Thoroughly Modern Millie the first).

Yet London nearly never got her as another big Broadway name, Megan Mullally, was originally cast but the injury-hit Will & Grace star withdrew.

And what songs they are! Who doesn’t know ‘It’s De-Lovely’, ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’, ‘You’re the Top’ (dazzlingly performed by Foster and Samuel Edwards, exceptional as lovelorn stowaway Billy Crocker), ‘Blow, Gabriel, Blow’ and, of course, the title song with which the whole company brings down the curtain so fabulously on Act I.

One of the show’s strengths is that almost everybody gets his or her moment, Crocker with ‘Easy to Love’ and with Hope Harcourt, the girl he has stowed away for (a sweet Nicole-Lily Baisden), on ‘It’s De-Lovely’. Both are products of ArtsEd and do that bastion of musical-theatre training proud.

The short-sighted billionaire Elisha Whitney (Gary Wilmot) is a riot with ‘The Crew Song’, the toff’s hapless fiancé Hope a delight with ‘Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye’ and Erma, the curvaceous floosie who goes through all the sailors like a knife through butter, electrifies with ‘Buddie, Beware’, a joyous turn by the energetic Carly Mercedes Dyer.

Gormless buffoon Lord Evelyn gets to show his other side in ‘The Gypsy in Me’ when impressing Reno enough to get involved with him and that precedes the glorious finale when everybody gets the partner he or she wants and they all live happily (?) ever after.

Even Felicity Kendal as Hope’s mother, frantic to get her daughter married off to money, finds an even wealthier one for herself to keep her in the manner to which she’s accustomed.

Wilmot as Whitney is always good but here even better than that in a dream of a role which he plays for all it is worth, while Lindsay, an actor not known for underselling a part, is bang on the money as the hopeless gangster.

The guitar gag when we are all expecting a shotgun to tumble out of his case is a hoot, and one of many moments that are genuinely funny. No doubt the input of PG Wodehouse who co-wrote the original book had a hand in that and in the Hooray Henry character Lord Evelyn.

It would be remiss not to mention the ship’s captain Clive Hayward and his crew who light up the stage in ‘There’s No Cure Like Travel’ and ‘Public Enemy Number One’ and the Angels Selina Hamilton, Alexandra Wright, Charlene Ford and Frances Dee as Purity, Chastity, Charity and Virtue who literally give this show legs.

You may have guessed by now that I quite liked it. I’ve seen more than a few Anything Goes, this is by far the slickest, funniest and glossiest. Beg, steal or borrow but push the boat out and do get a ticket.

Jeremy Chapman