By Jove, this could be a hit

10 April 2012

What a discovery or rather a thrilling recovery and reinvention! The United Kingdom professional premiere of this Indian-summer Cole Porter musical, first seen in New York 54 years ago, memorably launches a Chichester Festival season stuffed with gods, devils, fairies and magicians.

Porter's score performed by an 11-strong band is pleasant rather than sensational. There are, however, two exquisite songs of female wistfulness, and melancholia - I Sleep Easier Now and Nobody's Chasing Me - that distil the musical's appealing essence.

Although both are sung with quite the wrong winsome brightness by Anne Reid, the impact of the rueful lyrics and seductive music proves devastating. A new book by American Greg MacKellan proves a delight, too. A bittersweet recipe, spiced with dark comedy, is concocted to make sexual fantasies come true. A cynic's guide to keeping old marriages fresh and young is produced.

MacKellan's book comes seamlessly stitched together from several original versions, together with an unproduced adaptation by Howard Asham and contributions by Jeremy Sams. As a result of MacKellan's artful patchwork, Out of This World emerges in a contemporary light. Three characters depart from the sexual straight and narrow, thereby updating the sort of musical that in the Fifties had to be as clean as a heterosexual whistle. Unfortunately, Martin Duncan's coarse-grained, pantomimic production,

with matching performances, camp costumes and drab choreography, makes little of the new book's sophistication, amusing sexual innuendo and repartee.

In scenes moving between Mount Olympus, Hollywood and Athens, the locations cleverly suggested by designer Francis O'Connor's fragmented columns and pillars, sexually questing gods come down to earth with a bump. Nicolas Colicos's wooden, booming Jupiter in a false beard and Miss Reid's perky, not securely sung Juno slip into human bodies in more ways than one. At length they realise only role-play will keep their faltering marriage off the rocks.

Complex and divine game-play also contributes to a lovely comedy of deceptions and discoveries put to song. Darlene Johnson's excellent gossip columnist slips out as lesbian; Simon Greiff 's unsuitably wimpish husband of Fiona Dunn's artificial, trilling movie star wakes up, hung over and hardly aware he has been bedded by both a goddess and Steve Elias's queenly Apollo. Recast and redirected, this would make a West End hit.

Out of This World, Chichester Festival Theatre, Until 25 September. Information: 01243 781312.

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