Kiss Me Kate, Victoria Palace, London; <br></br>Star Quality, Apollo, London; <br></br>The Royal Family, Haymarket Theatre Royal, London; <br></br>The Theft of Sita, Riverside Studios, London

The funniest shrew in town

In the West End, art and life are reflecting each other obsessively as three shows about showbiz types opened last week – joining Noises Off and Over the Moon. Have all these thespians started laughing at themselves on cue? You could argue they're providing very timely escapist entertainment, allowing us to forget the troubled outside world for a few hours. Certainly, Michael Blakemore's revival of Kiss Me Kate, transferring from Broadway to the Victoria Palace, is storming fun. Cole Porter's musical version of The Taming of the Shrew (with book by Sam and Bella Spewack) adds a winning dimension to Kate and Petruchio's brawls as we find ourselves in a receiving Baltimore theatre in 1948. Here actor-manager Fred (Brent Barrett) and his glam co-star, Lilli (Marin Mazzie), enact their Shakespearean roles with gusto beyond the call of the Method school. Back in their dressing rooms, you see, they're scratchy, jealous, ever-smitten old flames.

Sure, the slapstick and cod mafia subplot can bore, but Porter's rhymes are wittily preposterous and his score – with emphatic Latin influences – is sultry. The chorus line really gets swinging during "Too Darn Hot", while Nancy Anderson is startlingly seductive singing "Why Can't You Behave" to her sweetheart Bill (the gymnastic Michael Berresse) who scales a balcony faster than your average guy can reach for his Lucozade. Most importantly, Mazzie and Barrett are a blast in mock-operatic mode – both ludicrously stroppy and genuinely tender.

By comparison, Star Quality at the Apollo is lacklustre, adapted by director Christopher Luscombe from Noël Coward's Fifties' short story and the Sixties' unproduced stage version. Penelope Keith plays a bossy diva, Lorraine, and Russell Boulter is her manipulative director, Ray – to an extent her Petruchio. They end up kissing after a backstage show-down. Star Quality wants to be a bleak exposé of the business, only Boulter's power games are flagged up melodramatically and the satire is often feeble. Keith is predictably supercilious and, sweeping into rehearsals late with a lapdog, she's an in-house cliché. To say this show is chasing its own tail might be judged a polite euphemism.

Does George S Kaufman and Edna Ferber's Twenties Broadway comedy, The Royal Family – revived by Peter Hall at the Haymarket – slip into the same category? Loosely inspired by the Drew-Barrymore theatrical dynasty, it comes across as faded frivolity for a long stretch. Three generations of top actresses – Fanny (Judi Dench), Julie (Harriet Walter) and Gwen Cavendish (assured newcomer Emily Blunt) – swan around their New York apartment. A minor-league sister-in-law (Julia McKenzie) is resoundingly kept in her place and dashing brother Anthony (Toby Stephens) is insanely flamboyant.

The cast's energy is uneven, and so are their accents. Yet Dench progresses from hilarious put-downs to poignant, terminal frailty. Ferber and Kaufman embrace the future, spotlighting proto-career women and Anthony's model of a Brechtian stage design. And ultimately Hall's gang rise above caricatures to celebrate the eternal pull of the theatre.

In an exotic forest on the Riverside Studios stage lives a demi-goddess called Sita. She's like a sliver of lace drifting, in silhouette, among dark tree trunks. The Theft of Sita is a touring, visually entrancing adaptation of The Ramayana by collaborating Indonesian and Australian artists – plus British designer, Julian Crouch. A traditional shadow-puppet dancing on rods behind a screen, Sita seems to melt into thin air when snatched from her beloved, Rama, by the demon Rawanna. Thereafter Twalen and Merdah – Rama's comical monkey-servants, with a hint of Disney – waddle across many terrains in pursuit.

Director Nigel Jamieson's version of the ancient epic moves into today's world. His musicians shift from haunting folk to blaring jazz as the forest is wrecked by monsters with the jaws of industrial diggers. Eventually, trundling through lurid computer-generated cityscapes, Twalen and Merdah save Sita from Rawanna who's now the embodiment of environmentally unfriendly capitalism. Our valiant duo are associated with street protesters via superimposed news footage.

The Theft of Sita was put together during the East Timor crisis and Indonesian-Australian tensions. Jamieson's ensemble pointedly lead a story about robbery and destruction to a hopeful conclusion, with an aesthetic which itself aims at enriching cross-cultural creativity. Nonetheless, you might question how the keen application of high-tech graphics tallies with the story's condemnation of contemporary ways. The closing political message is also heavy-handed and simplistic, unlike the vintage puppeteering with which we began.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Kiss Me Kate': Victoria Palace (020 7834 1317) to 9 Feb; 'Star Quality': Apollo Theatre (020 7494 5070) to 12 Jan; 'The Royal Family': Haymarket Theatre Royal (0870 901 3356) to 2 Feb; 'The Theft of Sita': on tour (Info: 020 7490 3965)