Privates on Parade review, Noel Coward Theatre

Rear guard

It's panto season, and if Clive Rowe can't be your dame, you could do a lot worse than Simon Russell Beale in playful mood. As Acting Captain Terri Dennis, he is a gnomic Carmen Miranda: a drag queen with a good line in corsets and wedgies. Heels that is. We find him in Malaysia, running a wartime entertainments troupe for the forces. Fittingly, given its title, there are so many Privates on Parade in Michael Grandage's production of the Nichols and King musical, a job lot of merkins couldn't hide them.

Thankfully, a judicious use of towels and props ensures it's a succession of butts one sees. Perhaps they're the butts of the jokes? If so, they're in and out at double speed, thick and fast, hard and hoary, round the back, against the wall and in your hands.  Would you like a double entendre, Sergeant?  Yes, and make it a big one. It's a walk past the spirits of Larry Grayson and John Inman, rather than Tom Ford.

Russell Beale is the poster star, but on stage it's Angus Wright as Major Giles Flack, a chinless wonder who has failed to notice he is commanding a platoon of pansies, who's the scene stealer, especially when he employs them to snare the slitty-eyed commie natives. Sophiya Haque, a huge star on the Indian subcontinent, is beguiling as the Eurasian love interest, spurned because of her race. There is a lot of casual and uncomfortable racism in the show, but a time when race is an issue in football and politics, it's a helpful measure of how far we've travelled. Grandage makes a clever attempt at balance in the final seconds.

In conclusion: The singing is terrible, which allied with inconsequential songs makes the entertainments an ordeal. But... if you're in party mood and enjoy wall-to-wall camping, this makes small potatoes of Glastonbury.

References:
Privates on Parade, tickets
Ian Shuttleworth review in The Financial Times