Review by Simon Jenner, July 24 2025
Just a few adaptations make natural transitions to the stage; the 1935 film of Top Hat seems to cry out for it, the most successful of Fred Astaire’s and Ginger Rogers’ movie partnership. This version of Irving Berlin’s Top Hat originally premiered in Milton Keynes in 2011, with additional orchestration by Chris Walker, and a book by Matthew White and Howard Jacques. Taking the five core film numbers (including the trio of hits), they’ve tripled the songbook to 15. This revival premieres at Chichester Festival Theatre till September 6th directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall. It’s a knockout, helped by Peter McKintosh’s dazzling set, and with Yvonne Milnes an equal shimmer of costumes, that ravish the senses and become stars themselves. You won’t see anything more exhilarating this summer.
Phillip Attmore and Ensemble. Photo Credit: Johan Persson
Though the book’s new it’s kept in period, with original jokes just given a lift or two. The story of how top dancer Jerry Travers (Phillip Attmore, taking Astaire’s role ) meets and falls for deeply unimpressed model Dale Tremont (Lucy St Louis for Rogers) is deliciously wafer-thin. A series of misunderstandings ripple when Jerry arrives incognito in London from Broadway. He keeps his famous name under wraps with everything logged as his long-suffering London manager Horace Hardwick (affably shrewd-if-bumbling Clive Carter).
So when Jerry finally impresses Dale, she then finds out he’s “Horace”; and thinks he’s the Horace married to her old friend Madge Hardwick (Sally Anna Triplett), since she’s not met Madge’s latest spouse. Cue flight to Venice where Madge summers; chased by Jerry, Hardwick and Hardwick’s long-suffering butler Bates (James Clyde) who’s either sulking or disguising himself appallingly. It doesn’t help that Dale left alongside her dress designer Alberto Bedini (Alex Gibson-Giorgio) who understandably has designs on Dale too. Might he be the marital zip for a broken heart? And might revelations come too late?
Every misunderstanding’s stretched like a wild dance-move till you fear they’ll tilt over. As for St Louis’ dresses, one for instance flames in flamingo orange leaving a sash for Attmore’s Jerry to pick up; and one pays tribute to the silver screen Top Hat hails from: silver and white it’s meant to be Beddini’s masterpiece.
Musical director Stephen Ridley helms a punchy and idiomatic ten-piece band. After an overture parading Berlin’s show hits we’re launched into routines with Attmore leading a ‘Broadway’ cast with the first of the big three numbers: ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ which is irresistible and the most tricksily syncopated piece then yet written for Broadway. Attmore both charms and vocalises a warm yet less aristo-Astaire persona: he’s more human and relatable. His ‘No Strings’ is a perfect solo showcase. Attmore and indeed the whole cast sing with warmth, idiomatic style and winning engagement over the show’s two-hours-fifty.
St Louis when she emerges is also less cut-glass than Rogers might be; equally warm in her mellifluous soprano-to-mezzo register, once she loses Dale’s initial hauteur and (only by the end) put-downs. With less solo routines St Louis (‘You’re Easy to Dance With’ starts out as a solo) still impresses in a moment of dreamed abandon. Happily there’s chemistry too. The couple’s routines are quite stunning. In ‘Cheek to Cheek’ and ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ they’re at their peak, élan and intimacy polished to a snatch at joy and sizzling attraction. Numbers like ‘I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket’ are quite catchy – and reprised since it takes two to fill this one. They and the ensemble use the upper and lower sweep of the stage with an array of dizzying numbers. Once or twice Busby Berkeley’s invoked.
James Clyde, Clive Carter and Alex Gibson-Giorgio. Photo Credit: Johan Persson
Carter is suffering avuncular incarnate, also lumbered with all things that might befall a Feydeau farceur. There’s a moment with a steak. The wrong one. Triplett enjoys an Ethel Merman-style drawl, put-downs and amused worldliness that sometimes makes Dale start. Particularly when Dale thinks Madge is egging on her apparent husband and Dale to make whoopie, hay or any other 1930s euphemism. Triplett and Carter’s best moment though comes in the touching and funny duet “Outside Of That, I Love You.’
Clyde’s role echoes Carter’s save his slight obliviousness to lack of success as a disguised spy: it’s where Clyde delights in guying himself. Yet this sober-faced sulker can surprise. Gibson-Giorgio’s Beddini till quite late seems a cameo till, when everything tilts his way he sings ‘Latins Know How’ – riotously. It’s a bravura Prothalamion or wedding song for Beddini himself; where Gibson-Giorgio also flings caution, clothes and dance-routines with a Latino dance style. He conflates tiny bits of salsa, tango and rumba. The most rippling thing next a striptease you’ll see all evening, it gets some of the loudest shout-outs. That’s the polite version.
You’d never think there’s a depression on. McKintosh frames the thrust stage as a semi-circle with a small drop on to an ensemble-used lower platform. It’s backed by an equally large semi-circle like the upper half of a clock-face, very Deco. There’s an inner segment on revolve so multiple bedrooms, London and venetian backdrops, a plane interior apparate and dissolve. There’s even an interval shift to a Venetian skyline in warm pink from the jutting midnight blue of Manhattan or London. Tim Mitchell’s lighting integrated with Deco lines pulse out as neon stripes, radiating through the backdrop. Every set of complementary colours from garish through deep violets through pastel subtlety cast tiny spells. It should get an award.
Of the huge multi-roling ensemble James Hume stands out as suave Maurice, Jerry’s Broadway manager as well as a London Hotel Manager and gruff skipper; and Connor Hughes as a frantic Concierge and Policeman. But every ensemble member (listed below) skims deliriously through a cameo.
Chichester’s Top Hat is the most joyous musical of the summer. Dazzlingly orchestrated, choreographed and danced, it’s also a spectacle where a pulsating set seems to have got up and danced for itself. It never overpowers the dancers though. And it has a summer heart that never cloys. A sizzling must-see.
Sally Ann Triplett, Jeremy Batt and Ensemble. Photo Credit: Johan Persson
Ensemble: Lindsay Atherton, Rhiannon Bacchus, Jeremy Batt, Freddie Clements, Pedro Donoso,, Bethan Downing, Autumn Draper, Tilly Ducker, Laura Hills, George Lyon, David Mackintosh, Jordan Oliver, Emily Ann Potter, Molly Rees Howe, Kirsty Sparks, Toyan Thomas-Brown.
Assistant Musical Director Luke Holman. Musicians Elaine Ambridge Jemma Clarke, Seve Coper, Rupert Widdows, Jonathan Vaux, George Shrapnell, Russell Bennett, Richard Freeman, Andy Watson, James Gambold.
Music Preparation Ann Barnard, Keyboard Programmer David Chin, Rehearsal Pianist John Reddel. Orchestral Management Andy Barnwell & Rich Weeden for BW Musicals Ltd.
Casting Director Natalie Gallacher CDG, Assistant Director and Choreographer Carol Lee Meadows, Associate Director Cameron Wenn, Associate Set Designer Ben Davies, Assistant Director & Choreographer Richard Pitt, Assistant Set Designer Simon Wells
Production Manager Bern Arkell, Costume Supervisor Zoe Thomas-Webb, Wig, Hair & Make-Up Designer Mark Marson, Props Supervisor Jonathan Hall, Assistant Costume Supervisor Ellie Hughes
CSM Matt Elesmore, Stage Manager Phil Gleadon, Luke Roberts, DSM Katie Stephen, ASMs Rachel Brown, Mark Smith, Laura Hackett
Photo Credit Johan Persson.