State Fair *** TNT
Somehow, director Thom Southerland and choreographer Sally Brooks have just about managed to fit seven pairs of singing and dancing actors onto the miniscule Finborough stage in this lively (if rather cramped) European premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1996 Broadway show which first came to musical life as a 1945 film.
The plot is as corny as they come as the Frake family set off for a long weekend of innocent country fun and competitiveness at the annual Iowa state fair. Ma and Pa are out to win prizes with, respectively, her preserves and his pig. Meanwhile son Wayne and daughter Margy, having left their sweethearts behind (one reluctantly, the other with some relief) find that the fair has a lot more to offer than just livestock and pickles and it’s not long before romance is in the air.
The objects of their affections (cynical cabaret singer Emily and womanising reporter Pat) still need to relax into their roles, but Sion Lloyd makes a likeably gullible Wayne and Laura Main’s Margy combines sweetness and spark. Like their dad (a confident Philip Rham) both these younger Frakes easily hold a tune.
It’s all quite pleasing in a harmlessly old-fashioned way, with a sprinkling of familiar and catchy songs to take your mind off the theatre’s rising temperature on a hot summer evening. And although, ultimately, it suggests that the grass is only sometimes greener on the other side of the fence, everything turns out for the best with even Pa Abel’s boar finding porcine happiness before the holiday outing is over.
Finborough, Finborough Road, SW10 9ED. Earl’s Court Tube (0844 847 1652) to 29th August (£9 - £13)
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