Dolls in a new guise

Freshly cast: Sally Ann Triplett and Neil Morrissey

Nick Curtis @nickcurtis|Evening Standard10 April 2012

Daring casting choices have galvanised this revival of Frank Loesser's homage to old Broadway's gamblers, broads and soul-saving missionaries.

When Michael Grandage's production first opened last year, it seemed technically brilliant but oddly sterile, and Ally McBeal star Jane Krakowski, as the adenoidal Miss Adelaide, stole the show from Ewan McGregor's tentative and vocally underpowered Sky Masterson.

Now, though still not perfect, the show has gained in emotional depth, comic timing and that mystery ingredient called zing, and is closer to the exuberant classic it should be.

Adam Cooper, former star of the Royal Ballet and of Matthew Bourne's iconoclastic Swan Lake, is the new Sky, the high-rolling gambler tamed by a holy-rolling mission girl who wins his soul in a bet. Cooper looks boyish but he has a commanding presence, a surprisingly rich singing voice and, of course, he dances like a dream.

Opposite him as Salvation Army girl Sarah is Kelly Price - plucked from the chorus to play the lead, and rightly so. Her voice is clean and clear and she is hilariously convincing as a character surprised by every turn of her own sensual awakening.

Neil Morrissey is also something of a revelation as hapless crap-game organiser Nathan Detroit. He slumps into this slope-shouldered loser as if he were a welcoming bed, essaying a passable Brooklyn accent and an even better singing voice.

Among the leads, only Sally Ann Triplett disappoints. A musical veteran, she brings languid raunch to Miss Adelaide's two cabaret numbers, which Grandage has famously sexed up. But she fails fully to supply the sniffles or the anguish of a woman given a psychosomat ic cold by Nathan's failure to marry her.

Still, the overall chemistry is better, which throws the relationships into sharper relief. The big numbers in Cuba and the Mission still deliver, even if the men dance better than the women, and even if Christopher Oram's sets remain a bit stark for my taste.

But I cared about Nathan this time around, and noticed how Adelaide's striptease informed her prosaic marital yearnings. I rooted for Sky when he rolled dice against gangsters in the sewer, and got a bit tearful when he and Sarah sang I've Never Been in Love Before.