Though stylishly mounted with lavish tap and ballroom routines to Irving Berlin’s peerless songs, this adaptation of the 1935 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film is a curiously flat affair. As long as director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall’s cast are singing and dancing it’s fine, and the orchestra’s renditions of Puttin’ on the Ritz, Cheek to Cheek and Let’s Face the Music and Dance are blissful high points in a score crowded with hits. But the slight and overextended romance that fills the gaps in between is sluggish where it should sparkle, the pace slow. The celebration of a gilded interwar age feels forced.
As Jerry Travers, a star Broadway hoofer transplanted to open a revue in London, Philip Attmore displays dazzling tap moves but only a gossamer layer of charm. As Dale Tremont, the fashion model Jerry pursues through absurd instances of mistaken identity, Amara Okereke has a lovely voice but seems a less fluid dancer than in previous roles. There’s little heat between them, little zing to the comic interplay among them and co-stars Clive Carter and Sally Ann Triplett.
