Review: Top Hat at the Liverpool Empire ****

The Empire is currently celebrating its centenary - and back in the same space in March 1926, Liverpool audiences would have been treated to Mr ‘top hat, white tie and tails’ himself Fred Astaire treading its boards.

Astaire appeared with his sister Adele in George Gershwin’s Lady be Good. And it evidently proved to be good, because they returned to Lime Street for another run in early 1927.

By the mid-30s, Astaire had gone from big theatre star to even bigger screen star. And arguably his defining role remains that of Jerry Travers in the 1935 tip-tapping screwball romantic comedy Top Hat (partnered by leading lady Ginger Rogers who famously did everything he did, just backwards and in high heels).

You might think Top Hat the stage musical dates from the same time. But in fact, it only goes back to 2011 when actor Tom Chambers parlayed his Strictly showmanship into the top hat-wearing romantic lead, Jerry Travers, on an inaugural UK tour.

Here the role of the Broadway star signed up for a West End show and who falls for a fellow guest in his London hotel is taken by Broadway’s Phillip Attmore (who, aptly, has a Fred and Adele Astaire Award for best male dancer on his shelf at home).

Attmore is a cracking dancer, and while his singing isn’t as strong, he’s very watchable and has a genial stage presence. He also sensibly brings his own interpretation to the role, and presents a much looser, more laid-back leading man than Astaire.

Meanwhile fellow award winner (a best actress in a musical accolade from The Stage) Amara Okerere is a sparky, no-nonsense Dale Tremont, the model whom he falls for after she remonstrates with him for ruining her beauty sleep with his antisocial hot hoofing.

They make attractive dance partners in a series of neatly choreographed scenes set to Irving Berlin’s timeless classics, including Isn’t It a Lovely Day (to get caught in the rain) and Cheek to Cheek.

Above: Amara Okerere as Dale Tremont and Sally Ann Triplett as Madge Hardwick. Top: Okerere and Phillip Attmore as Jerry Travers. Photos by Johan Persson.

Rather like panto though, sometimes it’s the peripheral characters who get to have just as much if not more fun, and James Hume and Sally Ann Triplett are a joy as the bickering impresario Horace and sassy socialite Madge Hardwick – their love-hate jousting coming to a head in the duet Outside of That, I Love You late in the second half.

There are also some cartoonishly cheery cameos from James Clyde as Horace’s inscrutable manservant Bates and Alex Gibson-Giorgio who merrily jumps the shark as the highly strung fashion designer Alberto Beddini (with a cod-Italian accent redolent of the preening lothario captain from ‘Allo ‘Allo).

His energetic performance is as preposterous as the plot - a Shakespearean confection of mistaken identity - which unfolds over what is an extravagantly long running time.

There’s bang for your buck and then there’s plain over-writing. The strength of these sorts of wisecracking, cinematic comedies from the 1930s is that they were bright, breezy and snappily short, and all the better for it. This Top Hat could happily lose 10-15 minutes.

Above: Jerry Travers (Phillip Attmore) and ensemble in Top Hat, White Tie and Tails. Photo by Johan Persson.

Still, away from the rather rangy script, it’s the feet that do the talking, and when Attmore lets himself go (yes, yes, I know that’s not technically Top Hat) it’s with a masterclass in the art of tap.

He’s supported by a nimble ensemble who bring glamour and style to the show's big numbers, notably the titular Top Hat (White Tie, and Tails) with its Busby Berkeley-style chorus line radiating out in an ever-increasing pinwheel of tapping precision. Chapeau to choreographer Richard Pitt.

That nod to the glamour of the original is echoed (and amplified) in Yvonne Milnes and Peter McKintosh’s set which is a swell-egant, elegant Art Deco delight, a glorious illuminated symmetrical backdrop to the action.

At its centre is a semicircle-shaped revolve which seamlessly switches scenes from theatre to hotel bedroom to hotel reception to bar and back again, augmented by a handful of additional props, and is a triumph of backstage organisation.