On Your Toes

Synopsis

A classic musical comedy, featuring tap, jazz dance and ballet as well as songs like It's got to be love and There's a small hotel.

Our Review:

8 August 2003

It's taken rather longer than expected for Paul Kerryson's revival of Rodgers and Hart's classic On Your Toes, first seen in May 2002 at the now dark Leicester Haymarket (See News, 20 May 2003; The Goss, 6 Aug 2003), to make its way to London. But I'd say it was well worth the wait.

Despite being written in 1936, some 35 years before he was born, the part of Junior Dolan seems custom-made for Adam Cooper. This is a musical set in the world of ballet, after all, and as such, provides ample opportunity for former Royal Ballet and Adventures in Motion Pictures principal Cooper, playing the closet toe-tapper, to show off his skills and raise knowing laughs while doing so.

For example, how perfect that Junior's favourite ballet is Swan Lake, the AMP all-male version of which made Cooper an international star, both on stage and on screen as the grown-up Billy Elliott. And to witness Cooper, in the Pr...