Puttin' on the Ritz

Puttin' on the Ritz

Playhouse, Edinburgh

Mary Brennan

THERE'S no business like showbusiness... And there's nothing quite like the promise of men in tails, women in slinks of white, and a set that has twin sweeps of Ziegfeld staircases curving to the floor. For the duration of that opening number - Irving Berlin's barnstorming salute to the all-singing, all-dancing business of entertainment - it seems this show is going to live up to its title. But somehow "ritz" isn't what it used to be, when Berlin - along with Cole Porter and George Gershwin, also featured in this production - distilled the glamour and giddy energies of the 1920s and 1930s into hummable melodies and clever lyrics.

Here, the singers - three male, three female - are, like the dancers, puttin' on the glitz. Everything has a veneer of brittle glitter that mistakes brash for class. Songs are delivered at full blast to pre-recorded orchestrations that pile on the razzamatazz, while the seven unflagging couples who waltz on, tap hectically, Charleston (standing up and sitting down) keep to the beat in a variety of costumes that make the girls look like victims of the frocky-horror show. The exception to all this is special guest star Lorna Luft who has showbusiness in her DNA.

Her all-too-brief handful of songs - mostly channelling the repertoire of her mother Judy Garland - comes as a reminder of why some numbers, like The Man That Got Away, are evergreen classics. There are other classics, of course. And some suit the non-stop cavalcade form and almost-50s cabaret feel of the show better than others. But with everyone puttin' in so much effort, they (and we) deserved a live band to give us the swing that means everything.