Crazy For You – Leeds Grand

CRAZY FOR You was created in 1992 as a return to traditional musicals following the big-budget excesses of the 1980s.

Top comedy playwright Ken Ludwig took George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930s show Girl Crazy, revised the plot, wrote a new script and added extra songs by the songwriting brothers.

It’s a story from a simpler time, of a young banker sent out West to foreclose on an old theatre facing bankruptcy.

Instead our hero Bobby, himself a would-be stage dancer, decides to put on a show to repay the mortgage, his New York showgirl friends and recruiting the local cowhands. Along the way. He falls for a feisty local girl.

This is an effervescent production, bursting with likeable performances and a witty script, and many of the songs like Embraceable You, I Got Rhythm and Someone To Watch Over Me are undeniably wonderful.

But this show, despite delighting the majority of the audience, didn’t grab me in the way many of those other old-fashioned, feelgood shows can.

It’s a rather cliched mix of two film and stage genres, cowboy classics like Calamity Jane and Annie Get Your Gun and the ‘let’s put on a show’ staples like White Christmas.

• Grand Theatre, Leeds, until Saturday. Call 0844 8482700 to book tickets.

DAVID KNIGHTS