The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ – the Musical, Curve Theatre, review: Bright, likeable but flawed

There are problems of perspective and tone that need sorting out before this amiable show can be seriously be ranked with Billy Elliot and Matilda

Elise Bugeja as Pandora and Joel Fossard-Jones as Adrian Mole in Adrian Mole - the Musical (Pamela Raith)

Let's face it, there 's never exactly been a surfeit of musicals that focus on misunderstood intellectuals – especially not the kind of undervalued thinker that hails from Leicester and is 13 ¾.

Here, plugging that mysterious gap, is this bright, likeable but flawed show by Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary. Sue Townsend's glorious 1982 book has generated several sequels, a TV and radio series and a 1984 West End adaptation with songs. The wonder, then, is why it has taken over thirty years for an all-singing, all-dancing version to hit the stage.

It's a pity, then, that we are shown moments that only the adults know about. For example, the grandma (Rosemary Ashe) gets to holler an accusatory ballad at her adulterous daughter-in-law (Kirsty Hoiles) in a scene that feels gratingly like going behind our hero's back.

I was about to say that Joel Fossard-Jones (one of the four Adrians to hand) is “spot-on” in the very demanding central role but a bad complexion is just about the only relevant thing he doesn't bring to a performance of well-sung wonderfully winning geekiness. Luke Sheppard's production has bags of verve, played on a jolly set of slanting cut-out houses by a hard-working cast of ten (four youngsters and adults who sometimes double as kids).

For my taste, though, the big productions numbers – choreographed with cheeky wit by Tim Jackson – occasionally feel at odds with what is special and funny in Townsend's warm, low-key treatment of these drab, downbeat lives and the Thatcher zeitgeist. They replace that distinctiveness with generic razzmatazz pastiche (traffic cones and hockey sticks pressed into action for the toppers-and-canes welcome to Pandora in “Look at That Girl”) that seems insufficiently an expression of Adrian's fantasy life.

There are problems of perspective and tone that need sorting out before this amiable show can be seriously be ranked with Billy Elliot and Matilda.

To April 4; 0116 242 3595