BWW Reviews: LOST MUSICALS 2013 - WORDS AND MUSIC, Lilian Baylis Studio, July 14 2013

If you're as irritated as I am by the dismissive expression "too clever by half", then Words and Music is the show for you. Ian Marshall Fisher has reached back 80 years to find a revue featuring many of Noel Coward's most - there's no other word for it - clever songs. With a supremely talented cast of singers, who appear to be enjoying it as much as we are, it's a splendid way to spend a couple of Sunday afternoon hours.

Most of the songs have a little banter between the cast to flesh out a sketch (and, in the case of Mad About The Boy, deliver a complete reinvention of the song, revealing Coward's genius once again) and there's plenty of charm and bile amid the fussing and the flirting.

My favourite number was Issy van Randwyck's icily satirical Children of the Ritz - as relevant in today's economic times as in the 1930s. Shamelessly stealing the show is Vivienne Martin, whose The Wife of an Acrobat is terribly funny and tearjerkingly poignant, sung with an aplomb that reveals all her years in theatre. With so many singers to call upon - in evening dress, with no props and all working from scripts - the variety of Coward's work really shines through - as does the wit, like Wodehouse's more burnished than diminished by the passage of time.

This show plays until 4 August and there's two more Sunday revivals to come as summer turns to autumn - Holly Golightly and Around The World. They will be performed to the same formula and, if they are half as eye-opening as Words and Music, will be an education as well as a delight.

Lost Musicals continues at Sadler's Wells Theatre, Lilian Baylis Studio on Sundays.

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