Dominic Cavendish — Theater Critic

Much of the show’s capacity to hold an audience enraptured rests on the tender shoulders of the juvenile lead. It’s hats off once again (and thrown to the rafters) to Cian Eagle-Service, affecting in Chichester and no less so here. Doubtless the three other lads sharing the role are top-notch too, but this 12-year-old’s expressive face, delicate frame and searing solos mean you couldn’t ask for more, sir. When he finally beams on being taken under the wing of Billy Jenkins’s swaggering Dodger, it’s like winter vanishing.

Archness is the order of the day, the brisk, interval-free affair (with book by Marla Mindelle, Constantine Rousouli and Tye Blue, the latter directing) trading on the best-known tropes and scenes, avid for cheap, camp shots. If you have genuine tears to shed for the victims of the disaster, it’s best to leave them at the door. That said, although it’s a case of anachronisms-a-go-go (in this irony-laden 1912, there are gags about texting, aubergine emojis, Grindr and the like), there’s a surprisingly decent fit between the storyline and Dion’s ballads.

The stark, sad fact, however, is that Weaver fails to weave the requisite magic. In terms of both her visual and auditory contribution, there’s something missing. She hasn’t done Shakespeare on stage since the mid-80s and has perhaps since become too wedded to the screen’s demands for minimalism, though Lloyd has plainly constructed the interpretation round maximal physical restraint. Her performance could possibly achieve some close-up marvels on camera but here, in contrast to his recent offerings (Tom Holland’s Romeo included), he forgoes that option.

Patrick Marber’s fun, slick-ish production pulls out all the stops for that still jaw-dropping scene, albeit on a fringier budget. Plump and purringly feline, Trevor Ashley’s Roger De Bris, Springtime’s director-turned-Hitler-stand-in, arrives in a gilded chariot – the kitsch pièce de résistance of a sequence that boasts a chorus-line of silver-clad stormtroopers goose-stepping, tap-dancing and Sieg Heil-ing with limp-wristed abandon. It’s a consummate guilty pleasure: we’re laughing at the Nazis at the risk of traducing the darkest chapter of 20th century history.

Style as well as (some) substance is required here, and you’d think that’d be here in abundance given that Elton John has written the music. But it’s as if the trendsetter who gave us Billy Elliot and The Lion King – not to mention some of the finest pop songs of our era – has couriered over some generic material and everyone has followed suit (the bland lyrics are by Shaina Taub and Mark Sonnenblick).

Even as she’s singing “wow wow wow fellas”, you half-register that, actually, for all its irresistible charm, “Hello, Dolly!” offers only an intermittent wow-factor, and nothing quite as career-defining for the star as her tour de force a decade or so ago in Sweeney Todd. Cooke taps the pathos of the character’s situation – presenting her initially alone, tidying clothes into a wardrobe – before hurtling her into a moving bustle of citizenry, as she gaily doles out calling-cards; later, she sings Look, Love in My Window.

Even as she’s singing “wow wow wow fellas”, you half-register that, actually, for all its irresistible charm, “Hello, Dolly!” offers only an intermittent wow-factor, and nothing quite as career-defining for the star as her tour de force a decade or so ago in Sweeney Todd. Cooke taps the pathos of the character’s situation – presenting her initially alone, tidying clothes into a wardrobe – before hurtling her into a moving bustle of citizenry, as she gaily doles out calling-cards; later, she sings Look, Love in My Window.

While you might be able to affect a Gallic shrug at the show’s unproblematised attitude to its central age gap (endorsed at the sentimental close), it’s harder to dispel the impression that the musical augmentation drains the tale of rustic authenticity. For all the strenuous accordion-playing and warm orchestrations, instead of becoming more atmospherically specific it all starts to sound touristically generic. And we’re not miles from ‘Allo ‘Allo!, with a community of types: the local drunk, the moralising priest, the sage teacher, the lecherous Mayor. They bicker a fair bit but don’t flicker into memorable life.

In a bold (some might say credulity-testing) move, Corden, 45, plays Alec an ex-serviceman who experienced traumatic tours of duty in Afghanistan. First seen installing security equipment in the constituency office of a Leftish opposition MP called Monica (Anna Maxwell Martin), he’s initially an innocuous gobby geezer (Corden on terra cognita). It turns out the pair went to the same school and grew up on the same street. “I’m always here if you need me,” she kindly offers, when it emerges he’s having domestic battles; Alec is distressed by his current divorce and separation from his children. That’s the basic compact of a good MP, isn’t it? But it becomes apparent that Monica may be intensifying his frustrations. Alec’s faith in his assumed ally to address his grievances (and even advance ideas about legislation to redress systemic bias, as he sees it, against men) is bound to meet a reality-check.

As a domineering, intemperate patriarch who has tightly controlled the purse-strings, the parallels with Succession are plain but the points of divergence are clear. Tyrone is a warmer character, aware of his fallibility; and whereas on screen Cox’s forte was forbidding impassivity, this verbose, confined epic calls for vocal clout and physical heft.

Moving the show to the West End might conceivably look like a commercially risky step too far, but there’s something about the defiant boldness of that assault on theatreland together with the apt concrete aesthetic of the Gillian Lynne that makes the show seem at home on its own terms.

The polite-ish audience participation doesn’t fully mesh with the dramatic need for a gathering witch-hunt, however, and Stockmann’s up-to-speed analysis also doesn’t quite align with Ostermeier’s barely technological depiction of this backwater. He cleaves to Ibsen’s template of whistleblowing via local-press publication, missing a trick when it comes to incorporating the demented online realm and social media.

Though it’s a commendably female-dominated evening (Ruby and Gloria’s husbands are derisory, ancillary figures), a shaming light is shone on predatory and presumptuous male behaviour in both eras. There may be some debate about the MeToo aspect of the storyline, which broaches female complicity in abuse; it’s a bold move for a man to tackle this subject. Of more pressing, prosaic concern for me was that the evening, running to almost three hours, just needs a trim and a less languid pace.

It will surely divide opinion and Jeremy Herrin’s production also invites complaints of over-statement – there’s a slight strain to some moments, now the play is set before a larger crowd. And yet, aside from a denouement that achieves that rare thing, shock-value, the evening offers the unmistakable pleasure that an actor of Harrelson’s stature has bothered to come over, and throw himself into a gleeful portrait of a visiting Yank as the grisly epitome of preening, mansplaining insufferability.

Their camaraderie may not have oiled the most crucial wheels of monarchy – as we cut between 1979 and 1952, when Tallon first arrived in the household as a callow youth, it’s made clear that the former Queen Consort is in constant danger of feeling like a spare part. But the energy lavished on enlivening the royal carry-on, against a backdrop of fiscal constraint and revolutionary winds of change, indicates the challenge of perpetuating the institution tout court.

Directed by Trevor Nunn, and choreographed by the great Gillian Lynne, this Cats remains an evening of fluff and nonsense, really, with leg-warmers and cutesy costumes that should be risible to a cynic's eyes. Yet such is the innate confidence and innocent zest of this bizarre, feline spectacle that all cynicism just moults away.