If you read reviews of musical theatre in order to decide whether to attend a show, I suggest that a word to look out for is "unapologetic" - for what use is musical theatre if it apologises for its absurdities? There's plenty of eyebrow-arching, knowing cynicism available should that be your bag - indeed, it seems that's all that's on television these days.
Salad Days is utterly unapologetic fun - two hours of upper middle-class twittishness, one part PG Wodehouse, one part Gilbert and Sullivan and one part er... the Two Ronnies' song and dance routines. In Tete-a-Tete's return visit to the Riverside Studios after last year's short and sweet run, the audience are presented on entry with degree certificates, joining fellow graduates Bertie Woosterish Tim and posh but feisty Jane, as they return to London after three blissful years partying and avoiding lectures at Oxford. After inevitable misunderstandings, Tim and Jane are soon an item and looking to placate interfering parents who want them, respectively, occupied by work and advantageously married off. Cue the arrival of a mysterious tramp and his bewitched mobile piano which, when played, compels, strictly, everyone within earshot to dance. In post-war, still strait-laced England of the early Fifties still ten years prior to Larkin's dating the invention of sex, such frivolity attracts the attention of the Pythonesquely incompetent Establishment and, well, everyone gets into a lot of scrapes until... they all live happily ever after.
Recent actual graduates Katie Moore and Sam Harrison are winningly winsome, singing without amplification, accompanied by a wonderfully low-key band, featuring two pianos and a lot of brush drumming. There's plenty of set-pieces for the rest of the cast to turn up the camp quotient, with a torch song tour-de-force from Kathryn Martin as nightclub chanteuse Heloise a showstopper. Crucially for the production to work, the actors patently have as much fun as the audience, inviting some "lucky" ones on to the "lawn" that serves as a stage for a bit of a dance and always, always, stopping just short of sending the whole thing up.
In keeping with the love shown towards the period piece quality of the material and the respect shown to the audience, the programme and supplementary materials produced by the Riverside Theatre and Tete-a-Tete are as informative as they are beautiful. As the winter gloom gathers to match a gloomy economy, Salad Days will whisk you back 56 years to a simpler, warmer time - and who needs to apologise for taking that trip?
Salad Days is at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith until 6 February 2011.
