Calamity Jane (Watermill, Newbury)

Welcome to Deadwood, outpost of the Wild West – and you’ll feel welcome from the moment you step into the Watermill, where designer Matthew Wright has created a theatre within a theatre, complete with stage and saloon bar, embracing the whole auditorium. Authentically makeshift tin can lanterns add to the effect; and tricolour rosettes round the gallery where talented actor/musicians are regularly stationed to play their instruments, make those seated there part of the action too.

Meet the townsfolk – they're pretty wild too. Director Nikolai Foster has assembled a company of terrific character actor/musicians, guys with fantastic faces and equally lived-in buckskins and denims that look like they’ve seen service prospecting for gold in those Black Hills of Dakota, all presided over by Anthony Dunn's comical saloon proprietor, Henry Miller.

After a hard day's prospecting, there's nothing this rowdy community wants more than an all-singing all-dancing big city star like Adelaid Adams. After all, there are precious few lasses in Deadwood and one of them dresses in male attire. Meet the aptly-named Calamity Jane. She rides shotgun on the Deadwood stage and always gets her man – and woman. But will her mission to deliver sexy showgirl Adelaid in her skimpy basque introduce a rival to turn the heads of those men, handsome soldier-boy Danny Gilmartin and tough frontiersman Wild Bill Hickock?

Jodie Prenger more than fills the buckskins of real-life, fast-shooting heroine Calamity. She creates a lovable lass, warm, impulsive and deliciously naïve, who visibly grows up as love – and jealousy – enter her life. And there’s that versatile voice, which warms the audience too, equally at home with gutsy belters like "The Deadwood Stage", the lyrical ballad "Black Hills of Dakota" (made nicely politically correct by replacing ‘beautiful Indian country’ with ‘mountainous’) and torch song "Secret Love".

She’s well matched physically and vocally by Phoebe Street‘s wannabe singer Katie Brown, masquerading as Adelaid. Street is dainty next to the Junoesque Prenger but with a big voice duetting with her in "A Woman’s Touch", as she takes a duster to the shabby cabin Calamity invites her to share. I’ve previously found this number too cute, but here it’s joyous tongue-in-cheek fun, cocking a snook at the idea of single ladies living together!

Tom Lister‘s Wild Bill and Alex Hammond‘s fine upstanding Danny are a complementary double act, replete with heartthrob machismo and in superb voice, solo or in harmony. Lister’s Bill is a match of a different kind for Prenger’s ‘Calam’ – his attractive laid back amusement at her shenanigans developing plausibly into something more.

Foster and superb choreographer Nick Winston have chosen a cast of stunning ‘triple-threats’ too, for as aficionados of Watermill musicals have come to relish, everyone can sing, dance and play, often several instruments. Take Rob Delaney. He doesn’t just play entertainer Francis Fryer (dragging up as Frances when occasion demands) – he plays virtuoso piano too. So when he falls for home-grown Deadwood beauty Susan (delightful Sioned Saunders), he duets with her on the honky-tonk piano that in its turn doubles as the stagecoach Calam rides in a stunning coup de theatre.

It’s that economy and versatility – wind instruments double as rifles – that marks this out as a really special production. The audience loved it, the man next to me sang along to Black Hills of Dakota – as we all did at the curtain call. Audiences countrywide are in for a treat and I guess Foster knows exactly how he’ll rework his production for larger houses.

Calamity Jane continues at The Watermill, Newbury until 6 September prior to national tour