42nd Street review: ‘Sheer, unadulterated brilliance’

There’s a moment in 42nd Street where pushy Broadway producer Julian Marsh says he won’t settle for good, he wants “sheer, unadulterated brilliance”. You can bet he’d be delighted, then, with the revival of the musical that opened at Leicester Curve and is currently playing at London’s Sadler’s Wells ahead of a UK tour. It’s smaller in scale than it was at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane from 2017 to 2019 but just as sheer, unadulteratedly brilliant.

Maybe more so. The Drury Lane production had a cast of 40-plus and big names like Sheena Easton, Lulu, and Bonnie Langford as over-the-hill diva Dorothy Brock during its run. The ensemble has been halved and the scenery scaled down, and necessarily so for a countrywide jaunt. But it’s still an all-singing, all-tap-dancing extravaganza, with eye-popping costumes and sets by Robert Jones and stage-filling choreography by Bill Deamer that’s wondrous to behold.

It’s a show in which chorus girls don’t walk to lunch, they tap-dance there, then break into a song and dance routine. Ruthie Henshall’s deliciously bitchy Brock doesn’t enter like a regular person, she bursts in like a demented superstar. Nicole-Lily Baisden’s fledgling hoofer Peggy Sawyer doesn’t do a twirl or two, she keeps spinning until she runs out of floor space. Adam Garcia’s Marsh doesn’t just want to put on a show called ‘Pretty Lady’ during the Depression, he wants it to be the best damn show anyone has ever seen.

And, as directed by Jonathan Church, this version of 42nd Street is one of the best damn versions I’ve ever seen. Previously the curtain rose to reveal an endless row of dancing feet but Church brings it up and down during the overture, offering glimpses of beautifully-lit performers and signalling that this is very much his own take, not a cut-price copy.

It’s gorgeous to look at, with nods to ‘An American In Paris,’ gold and purple as its primary colours, the cast singing ‘We’re in the Money’ on giant coins and shuffling off to Buffalo on an Art Deco train.

The score features songs that Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer wrote for the 1933 film which inspired the show, plus contributions they made to other movies around that time. Everyone is a gem, as is every performance – with Josefina Gabrielle (like Henshall, a Chicago alumni) especially delicious as a songwriter who belts like Ethel Merman and dances as deftly as performers half her age.

Yes, there’s some casual sexism in the script; it was written in the early-80s and is set in the 30s. But Church plays it down as he ups the spectacle and amplifies the laughs. As Garcia declares, there are no finer words in the English language than ‘musical comedy’. And there’s no finer musical comedy than 42nd Street, now more than ever.

42nd Street is at Sadler’s Wells, London, until 2 July and tours the UK from 13 July. Get tickets here.