Mack and Mabel, Criterion, London

Slap that drum when you're mad at your man

Starring David Soul and Janie Dee, this musical by Jerry Herman sees showbiz blowing its own trumpet in a quirkier fashion than is the norm.

The director John Doyle - whose previous hit, Sweeney Todd, went on from Newbury's Watermill Theatre to thrill Broadway - specialises in multi-tasking ensembles. So his cast don't just act, sing and dance, they also double as their own DIY orchestra. Thus, in this loosely biographical Hollywood tragi-comedy about the troubled romance between the 1920s silent-screen director Mack Sennett and his star Mabel Normand, the movie-making extras roll antique cameras and prop baskets about whilst exuberantly tooting on saxophones, trombones and trumpet.

I'd rather see this than many a splashier production. However, it should be pointed out that the stage is so cramped that the choreography is minimal. It's also hard to give a hoot when Herman keeps ditching the love story to let Sennett bang on about the history of cinema with projected snippets of the Keystone Kops. The gravelly-voiced Soul contrives to exude sorrowful weariness and surging nostalgic enthusiasm and Dee is bubbly and pert, sometimes irritatingly milking the sentimentality, but also playfully inventive with percussive instruments, using a rattle as a pepper grinder and slapping a passing drum when she's mad at her man.

To 22 July, 020 7413 1437