Picture: Johan Persson
Top Hat was reviewed at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London where it continues until 18 October 2025. The tour continues until 11 April 2026.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Plenty has already been written about the touring version of Chichester Festival Theatre’s summer smash – it’s only three weeks since our Edinburgh correspondent reviewed Top Hat – but Wimbledon’s opening night was somewhat different.
With leading lady Amara Okereke unavailable, first cover Lindsay Atherton was drafted in for the female lead of Dale Tremont on press night and the standing ovation at the end was as much for her as for its rubber-jointed Broadway star Phillip Attmore’s spectacular tap dancing in the role of visiting American Jerry Travers.
Atherton’s long list of credits as an associate choreographer clearly stood her in good stead in this arduous role as she danced and sang her way into everyone’s hearts. Good chemistry too in the sublime ‘Cheek to Cheek’ number with Attmore as she did her very best to make up for any disappointment Okereke’s many fans may have felt. Covers and understudies are at the very soul of theatre life and Atherton is a shining example.
Attmore’s big moment came in the dazzling finale to Act I, ‘Top Hat, White Tie and Tails’, quite wonderfully choreographed by director Kathleen Marshall in a lavish production that spares no expense to please. Full kudos to Peter McKintosh for the gorgeous sets which took us stylishly from New York to London to Venice.
Attmore doesn’t quite have Astaire’s elegance (but then no one has) but his energy and athleticism are a sight to behold. A little tap goes a long way with me because I find it quite a limited art form but if you’re addicted to the genre, Top Hat is where you want to be.
It is just as well for everyone else that West End stalwart Sally Ann Triplett as producer’s wife Madge Hardwick does not appear until Act II of this utterly bonkers tale of mistaken identity and improbable romance as she steals every scene she is in. Nothing new there – she always does – but her comic duet on marriage ‘Outside of That, I Love You’ with James Hume as husband Horace is the highlight of the evening for many judging from the applause. Those two are a hoot.
Lugubrious and deadpan, James Clyde gets his laughs as manservant Bates as does Alex Gibson-Giorgio as eccentric fashion designer Alberto Beddini in a script by Matthew White and Howard Jacques that has its moments, although I think Act II is at least five minutes too long and some of the jokes didn’t reach Row O where I was sitting.
This is escapist entertainment, pure and simple. Park your brain at the door as you come in, relax, tap you feet, sing all those songs we know so well from ‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’, ‘Isn’t It a Lovely Day’, ‘Cheek to Cheek’, ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’, ‘I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket’ and the already mentioned ‘Top Hat’, plus my favourite, ‘Outside of That, I Love You’, and you’re going home happier than when you arrived.
I scoured the programme for a list of the 14 numbers – six more than in the original 1935 Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie – which MD Stephen Ridley and his 11-strong band performed with such practised relish, but could not find it, a glaring omission and an insult to the genius who created them. Without Irving Berlin, Top Hat is nothing more than a piece of stylised froth.
If you can’t get to Wimbledon this week, Londoners have another opportunity to see Top Hat when it plays on the South Bank from 12 December 2025 to 17 January 2026.
Jeremy Chapman
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