Picture: Andreas Lambis Photography
Top Hat continues at The Mill At Sonning until 8 January 2022.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
What a beautiful experience a night out in picturesque Sonning turned out to be and not just because The Mill’s Christmas show Top Hat is a cracker.
It’s the whole package – a super two-course, gluten-free buffet, a smiling, welcoming team led by managing director Sally Hughes, a bijou theatre space of infinite charm, a musical full of elegance and style… and those Irving Berlin songs!
To steal a line from another giant of musical theatre: Who could ask for anything more?
The £69 ticket charge (£61 for matinees) covers everything apart from drinks and if you think that’s a lot of money, the only seat at that price in most West End musicals these days is up in the gods.
Top Hat is a bit of a hybrid, having been turned into a stage musical 76 years after the movie, the best-known of those dreamy Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers collaborations.
Not many musicals get their premiere at Milton Keynes, but Top Hat did in 2011 before going on a 17-week UK tour before settling in at the Aldwych with 2008 Strictly Come Dancing winner Tom Chambers, in the Astaire role, starring as American dance legend Jerry Travers and Summer Strallen as his high-society love interest Dale Tremont.
Following a 17-month West End run, Top Hat went on a year-long UK and Ireland tour and here it is again, a vision of style and elegance, full of nostalgia for a bygone era.
Heading the Sonning cast are spectacular tap-dancer Jack Butterworth and Billie-Kay who I last saw in the Paris ensemble of Funny Girl shortly before the first Covid lockdown early last year. The 11-week run of Top Hat is a big opportunity for her and she takes it with both hands (or should it be legs?).
The predictable story of mistaken identity is slight and silly, the plot farcical and wildly improbable but, hey, this one’s all about the dancing, the fabulous outfits (by costume designer Natalie Titchener) and those classic songs, the unforgettable melodies that have stood the test of time.
The film had only five numbers, the title song, ‘Isn’t This a Lovely Day’, ‘Cheek to Cheek’, ‘No Strings’ and ‘The Piccolino’, but as the prolific Berlin wrote more than 800, there was never a problem finding suitable candidates for the enlarged stage version.
‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’ opens the show with some exhilarating, high-kicking tap led by Butterworth, ‘I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket’ is so catchy they sing it twice and ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’, with all 14 cast members kicking up a storm, a brilliant finale – just three of the toe-tapping additional numbers that Matthew White and Howard Jacques have worked into their adaptation of the original screenplay.
The embarrassment of Berlin riches means it’s a long show, two and three-quarter hours, though it doesn’t feel like it such is the pace that director Jonathan O’Boyle injects from the get-go.
With a gorgeous and ingenious Art Deco set in pastel pink and green from designer Jason Denvir, perfectly lit by Nic Farman, and Ashley Nottingham’s dazzling choreography using all the aisles to create extra space, O’Boyle has managed to squeeze a huge musical – 31 in the original cast – into pint-pot Sonning with tremendous flair.
He seamlessly manages to convey the show’s three destinations, New York, London and Venice, and 12 set changes per act without losing the piece’s frothy feel or impetus.
And musical director Chris Poon makes light of having only two henchmen backing up his keyboard work without losing the lushness of the score (musical arrangements by Francis Goodhand).
It’s a pity Tiffany Graves, who plays henpecked entrepreneur Horace Hardwick’s bossy wife Madge, doesn’t appear until Act II as she gets some great lines in a dream of a part and steals every scene she’s in.
Bumbling Horace himself (Paul Kemble) is an apoplectic accident waiting to happen while Brendan Cull is simply marvellous as manservant Bates who adopts several different disguises and funny voices to great effect and Delme Thomas’ infatuated Italian fashion designer Beddini doesn’t miss a trick.
But this is mainly the Butterworth-Billie-Kay show and their lovely ‘Cheek to Cheek’ duet embraces everything that’s charming about this gem of a musical.
So much of Top Hat is the dancing. A little tap goes a long way with me but tap lovers will be in heaven. The ensemble work so hard it’s only fair to list them. So take a bow Joel Baylis, Natalie Bennyworth, Charlie Booker, Charlotte Coggin, Jinny Gould, Alex Harrison, Connor Hughes and Meg Power.
Ashamed to say this was my first visit to The Mill. I can’t wait to go again. My one reservation is the late start of 8.15pm that leads to an 11pm finish, hardly ideal in midweek when folk have to go to work next day. Nor will it encourage out-of-towners facing a long drive home in the dark. Getting back after midnight after a 70-minute drive, as we did, could be avoided with a 7.45 curtain-up.
For those who want to see just the show without the gluten-free trimmings, The Mill is putting on extra matinees every Thursday from 4 November to 2 December and after Christmas on 6 January. But give yourselves a treat and go the whole hog. It’s well worth it.
Jeremy Chapman
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