United Kingdom Irving Berlin’s Top Hat The Musical: Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 24.2.2026. (JPr)
Yet another musical arrives on tour at the Cliffs Pavilion based on a film I have never seen in full. However, it is one of those films I could almost believe I had because of all the clips of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers from the original 1935 film I have seen in various biographical or complication programmes and the times I have heard Irving Berlin’s classic songs on different occasions. So familiar to me were ‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’, ‘Isn’t This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain)?’, ‘Top Hat, White Tie and Tails’, ’Cheek to Cheek’, and ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ that I was often singing – or at least humming – along and it was good that the seats next to me were empty!
The plot of Top Hat is oh so thin and basically just a mashup of a show-within-a-show and a bedroom farce. You can read on the tour’s website this introduction: ‘When Broadway star Jerry Travers arrives in London to open a new show, he crosses paths with model Dale Tremont whose beauty sleep is rudely interrupted by Jerry tap dancing in the hotel suite above hers. Instantly smitten, Jerry vows to abandon his bachelor life to win her – but the path of true love never does run smooth. Especially since Dale has mistaken Jerry for his hapless producer Horace, who’s trying to avoid the wrath of his formidable wife Madge, and Dale’s own fiery Italian admirer is planning a trip to Venice for her to showcase his couture gowns’. And that is basically all you need to know of the shenanigans which – truth be told – only come to life after the interval. Why that was is hard to say and might be because Top Hat initially shows its Hollywood of the 1930s origins compared to all the kaleidoscopic brashness of more modern musicals.
This revival began at the Chichester Festival Theatre last summer and was seen at the Royal Festival Hall at the turn of the year. The 2011 stage adaptation (by Matthew White and Howard Jacques) won the 2013 Olivier Award for Best New Musical and the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Night Out. American director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall, acclaimed for her Tony and Olivier Award-winning production of Anything Goes recently, has created this brand-new Top Hat. Interviewed in the programme Marshall explained how ‘its not exactly 1930s: we may want to swing a bit more, to make it joyful. With the costumes, we may adjust the hemlines to make them more flattering. We’re not doing a museum piece. But we don’t want anything anachronistic – no Starbuck jokes! As I said to the cast, when the film came out in 1935, it was contemporary; what they were doing was the height of sophistication and style for that era. It was hip, it was popular, those songs were on the charts. So yes, this is a period piece but we want to have the vibrancy and immediacy that it had for the audience who first saw the film.’
The costumes from Yvonne Milnes and Peter McKintosh are a feast for the eyes and there is an ingenious art deco set from McKintosh based on the face of Big Ben with a centre which revolves and with changes of furnishings takes us smoothly – aided by Tim Mitchell’s atmospheric lighting design – from a backstage Broadway theatre, to a London club, the bedrooms of a luxury hotel, a park in the rain, and then a Venetian quayside and the hotel playground for those flaunting their wealth.
Beginning with the Overture the small (unseen) band of 12 under conductor Luke Holman deserve the highest praise for their spirited renditions of Chris Walker’s orchestrations. It all sounds luscious enough that you do not need to dredge your memories of the how the music originally sounded. There is also an extremely talented and indefatigable ensemble who Marshall praises as ‘so strong technically but also vivid individually’. They have a lot to do throughout the show – including scene changing – and apart from their excellent singing and dancing starting with the tap-tastic ‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’ to the rampant Finale they provide background ‘colour’ to what we see; whether as hotel staff and guests, holidaymakers, as well as ‘playing themselves’ as the company of a musical with ostrich-feathered showgirls for one particular scene.
Though apparently a serial philander James Hume’s wealthy Horace Hardwick is taken advantage of both as a producer and husband. He has a cynical view of marriage summed up by the quote (just one of many similar ones) ‘Until a man is married, he isn’t complete – after that, he’s finished’. Hume brings to Horace the rather flustered mien of someone not entirely in control of the vagaries of his life.
James Clyde reprises the role of Bates, Horace’s butler, who has a low opinion of those he serves. Clyde created the role in the original Chichester production and gets some funny disguises including a dowager duchess, gondolier and significantly (but no spoilers here!) a priest. Clyde delivers his lines dryly – and all the better for it – with a family saying for every occasion.
Alex Gibson-Giorgio (who also was at Chichester) is Alberto Beddini, the outrageously camp – whether his character realises it or not – fashion designer, wanting his muse Dale Tremont to show-off his creations in Venice. A cod-Italian accent brought back memories of another equally preening – and also an Alberto! – Captain Bertorelli in the vintage comedy ‘Allo ‘Allo! Gibson-Giorgio’s moment in the spotlight was the hilarious ‘Latins Know Best’.
Horace Hardwick’s wife Madge does not appear until after the interval but is worth wating for as she deals implacably with her husband’s perceived infidelity and all the other plot twists and turns as Top Hat rushes headlong towards – well you know it anyway – a happy ending for all. The wonderful Emma Williams brings all her experience in musicals to make Madge a grand dame in the tradition of Margaret Dumont, the comic foil of the Marx Brothers. Dumont never seemed to get the joke whilst Williams’s sardonic humour reveals she is clearly more knowing. There was great fun to be had in Madge’s love/hate duet with Horace and ‘Outside of That, I Love You’ was a tour de force; even though it is something of a showstopper … and not in a good way.
As the leading pair Broadway’s Phillip Attmore (from Chichester again) and Amara Okereke (who came to prominence as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady at the London Coliseum in 2022, review here) were well-matched as Jerry Travers and Dale Tremont. Attmore lopes around the stage and displays the self-assurance and charisma of a consummate entertainer who is at the top of his game, both as Jerry in the show and as Phillip himself. Attmore almost makes you believe in the silliest of situations his character gets embroiled in. Dancing together with Okereke’s Dale there is an engaging chemistry even though sometimes his partnering was a little more effortful than Astaire’s with Rogers. Regardless there is much to delight a modern audience in Jerry ditching his bachelor existence and putting all his eggs in one basket (!) in his pursuit of Dale. Okereke is a delightful Dale who sings strongly particularly in a plaintive ‘Better Luck Next Time’ and proves a well-matched sparring partner in all the amusing romantic confusion.
It was in another musical that Judy Garland sang ‘Forget your troubles, come on get happy’ but it will be this Top Hat which will make you do that – in spite of the filmiest of storylines – because of its sophistication, wit, memorable songs and dance routines given stunning performances from a multi-talented cast.
Jim Pritchard
For more about Top Hat The Musical on tour click here.
Featured Image: ‘Puttin’ On the Ritz’ © Johan Persson
Cast:
Phillip Attmore – Jerry Travers
Amara Okereke – Dale Tremont
James Hume – Horace Hardwick
Emma Williams – Madge Hardwick
James Clyde – Bates
Alex Gibson-Giorgio – Alberto Beddini
Ensemble – Lindsay Atherton, Rhiannon Bacchus, Freddie Clements, Pedro Donoso, Autumn Draper, Tilly Ducker, Zak Edwards, Stuart Hickey, Laura Hills, Connor Hughes, David McIntosh, Jordan Oliver, Emily Ann Potter, Molly Rees Howe, Kirsty Sparks and Toyan Thomas-Browne
Swing – Bethan Downing, Maddie Harper, George Lyons, Joe Press
Creatives:
Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin
Based on RKO’s Motion Picture
Adapted for the stage by Matthew White and Howard Jacques
Director and Choreographer – Kathleen Marshall
Set designer – Peter McKintosh
Costume designers – Yvonne Milnes and Peter McKintosh
Lighting designer – Tim Mitchell
Sound designer – Paul Groothuis
Musical supervisor – Gareth Valentine
Orchestration and Dance arrangements – Chris Walker
Musical director – Luke Holman