Fans of legwarmers and DayGlo will cheer the West End arrival of this noisy, upbeat show, which translates Adrian Lyne’s 1983 film about a go-getting and improbably glamorous Pittsburgh steel worker into an energetic musical romp.
It’s a nostalgia trip, evoking the rather questionable charms of an age when hair and mobile phones were huge and tank tops were tiny. In Nikolai Foster’s deft production, with an ingeniously adaptable design by Morgan Large, we’re deep in Eighties revivalism.
Yet the show is modern too, as Arlene Phillips’s tight choreography introduces elements of the brilliantly robotic street dance that invariably adorns Britain’s Got Talent. The story is a succession of clichés. By day an apprentice welder, Alex spends her nights dancing in clubs, aspiring to attend the local conservatoire and study ballet. When the ruthless boss’s sensitive nephew Nick turns up, a cheesy romance unfolds.
It’s a formulaic setup that permits a sentimental celebration of individualism and working-class ambition. The film resembled a series of pop videos — a product of a period increasingly attuned to MTV’s eye-catching conceits. Many of the songs have become insidiously familiar, in particular Maniac and the anthemic What A Feeling.
Those are the highlights here, though there are 14 new tunes by Robbie Roth, which parade an unsophisticated yet relentlessly efficient form of rock-inflected pop. We see the same almost workmanlike efficiency in the book by Tom Hedley and Robert Cary and in the lyrics by Cary and Roth.
The show’s appeal has everything to do with the performances. As Alex, Victoria Hamilton-Barritt radiates star quality. She’s likeable and sassy, an immensely confident dancer and versatile singer. Also impressive are Hannah Levane and Twinnie Lee Moore as her fellow club performers, while Charlotte Harwood relishes her role as Gloria, an artiste lured into an altogether seedier underworld. As Nick, ex-Busted member Matt Willis seems lightweight initially but grows in stature.
Ultimately, Flashdance, for all its dazzle, lacks a real imaginative freshness. It feels like a knowing fusion of Cinderella, Billy Elliot and Fame, straining too hard for big effects, and we don’t care enough about the characters. Yet it’s a raunchy, crowd-pleasing spectacle which busily delivers both the things its title so brazenly promises.
Until February 26. Information 020 7379 5399.
Flashdance The Musical
Shaftesbury Theatre
Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8DP
