"Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" is one of those films that is best remembered for its film version, which does the standard Hollywood thing of the mid-50s of changing a chunk of the plot and replacing around half the songs with new ones by the house composer. On the evidence of this production, that's not necessarily the worst thing - in the film version, Jane Russell manages to be just as iconic as Marilyn Monroe as the sardonic best friend, while in this production everything very much leans towards Georgina Hopson as blonde bombshell extraordinaire Lorelei Lee - she gets the lion share of all the best songs ("Little Girl from Little Rock" and "Diamonds are A Girls best friend" are solos here, and she gets the lion share of "Bye Bye Baby" as well, as the three key songs that made it into the movie), taking full advantage of centre stage and glorying in her faux-innocent seductiveness. Emily Halvea is a great actress to watch but she has very little to play with here as Lorelei's friend Dorothy - Russell's big number "Aint there Anyone Here for Love" was a movie creation, so Halvea is stuck with the inferior "I love what I'm doing". And hearing much of the rest of the songs very much explains why the movie did without them, whether it be the irritating "I'm a tingle, I'm aglow" or the bland "Sunshine". This is not Jules Styne's greatest musical moments
The plot, such as it is sees Lorelei and Dorothy entangling with a series of fairly awful men - the sleazy Lord Beekman (Thomas Campbell), the twittish Gus Edmond (Tomas Kantor), the obsessive Josephus Gage (Tomas Parrish) or the overly-controlling Henry Spofford (Matthew Predny). Despite attempts on the poster and the pre-publicity to claim that the show is really about the sisterhood between Loreliei and Dorothy the material itself never really justifies that beyond the occasional image here and there.
Richard Carroll's production looks great despite the thinness of some of the material - with the orchestra, led by Victoria Falconer, in a central box above the stage (Falconer comes down at the beginning of Act Two to play with the audience and there's a temptation here to completely ignore the original script and just give Falconer a cabaret show for fifteen minutes, a temptation that should have been indulged more. Daniel Potra's set takes advantage of that onstage band and two very versatile sets of stairs, though having the band where it is means everybody's exit requires a very noticeable ducking to go under the orchestra's nest.
In short this is as nice a production as this material is ever going to get, and probably a better production than it deserves. Which makes it a bit of a curates egg- enjoyable moments but never enough to justify the regular doldrums.
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