As I got up from my seat at the interval the word I kept hearing around me as the audience filed out to the bar was "lovely" and that one word summation is a pretty good description of the Menier Chocolate Factory's Christmas Show.Neither suspects they're writing to the other until a little shop politics results in the truth coming out. By which time of course they're already in love with each other thanks to the correspondence.
This is musical comedy force ten so if the idea of chirpy shop assistants singing good morning as customers dance in and out makes you nauseous then stay away. If however you enjoy a gentle, tune full, romantic comedy with twirling waiters and stolen kisses in the snow then book, book, book!
Even before the shop at the centre of the story, a perfumery, is decorated for Christmas it's already a gorgeous, pink and shimmering delight which defies romance not to break out. Design by Paul Farnsworth.
The whole soufflé light concoction is superbly directed by Matthew White with the most delicate of touches and the performances are exceptional. What a brilliant idea to play the whole thing with the clipped, heightened English accents of Noel Coward's Brief Encounter.
Scarlett Strallen is everything you could wish as our leafing lady. She is pitch perfect with the sparring comedy and warm, open and vulnerable when she needs to melt hearts, ours and her prospective boy friend. As played by Mark Umbers he's proper square jawed handsome with a nice line in self depreciation so we always know he's a nice guy even when he's not. They both sing like a dream.
There's terrific work from the supporting cast too with Katherine Kingsley as a blousy best friend, Dominic Tighe as her no-good cheating rat of a lover, Callum Howells as a loveable urchin type delivery boy, Alastair Brookshaw as a kind hearted yet hen pecked husband and Les Dennis as a boss who takes out his marital problems on his staff until he learns better.
The company dance routines feel like they've been shoehorned in by Fiddler on the Roof song writers Jerry Block and Sheldon Harnick as an afterthought (book by Joe Masteroff) and some moments really don't justify breaking into song but who cares the collective effect is... well, lovely. Treat yourself.
Alone on a brightly lit stage for an hour and fifteen minutes Mark Lockyer bravely relates his real-life, horrific descent into manic depression, which resulted in the attempted incineration of an entire building of vulnerable people. It’s the stuff of nightmares, even of horror films.