Top Hat
★★★★☆ Tip-Top
Edinburgh Playhouse: Tue 30 Sept – Sat 1 Oct 2025
Review by Martin Gray
Thirties glamour and classic tunes come to the Playhouse this week courtesy of Chichester Festival Theatre’s production of Top Hat.
Irving Berlin’s Top Hat doesn’t lack for famous numbers. There’s the title song, of course, whose Sunday name is Top Hat, White Tie and Tails. Then there’s Cheek to Cheek, Let’s Face the Music and Dance, and Isn’t This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain)?…
Phillip Attmore and the cast of Top Hat. Pic: Richard Parr.
It’s surprising, therefore, that the most successful song and dance sequences on the night are two that don’t feature our Fred and Ginger characters, Broadway star Jerry Travers and high society model Dale Tremont.
These two meet for the first time in London, where bachelor hoofer Jerry is tap dancing in a hotel room, stopping Dale, in the room below, getting her beauty sleep. She storms upstairs and while he is immediately smitten, she is spectacularly uninterested.
The room isn’t Jerry’s, however, it’s assigned to his producer pal Horace Hardwick. But Hardwick isn’t present, cue much misunderstanding as Dale believes she’s had a row with a married man.
It’s a farce, and a good one
Jerry pursues her around London, follows her to Venice (where Dale is modelling gowns for Italian designer Alberto Beddini) and bumps into her friend Madge, who happens to be Horace’s wife.
Dale is appalled and unnerved by the behaviour of ‘Horace’, and fails to notice she’s being tailed by Horace’s uppity manservant, Bates, because the producer assumes Dale is out to entrap Jerry.
So yes, it’s a farce, and a good one, straight from the 1935 RKO musical. One big difference, though, is that while Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced in a world of black and white, Phillip Attmore’s Jerry and Amara Okereke’s Dale are hoofing in living colour.
Sally Ann Triplett (in white top) and the Top Hat company in The Piccolino. Pic: Richard Pitt.
This difference is nowhere more eye-popping than in Act Two’s opening number, The Piccolino, as Madge is introduced amidst the superb ensemble, with everyone clad in macaron tones courtesy of costume designers Yvonne Milnes and Peter McKintosh.
It’s gorgeous, and the performances are on point too: a bullseye-hitting combo of precision and musicality. Elsewhere in the show boys and girls alike are tapping and swapping canes in the classic Astaire outfit and they are terrific.
Attmore also gets to peacock as sassy man-about-town Jerry, with his bags of charm well demonstrated in the sweetly sung I’m Putting All My Eggs In One basket. As for his tap dancing, first seen in the Broadway-set opening number Putting On The Ritz, it’s thrilling, and remains so throughout the show.
underpowered
Attmore seems less comfortable in the ballroom numbers. He is a little hunched when dancing Cheek to Cheek with Okereke, and the lifts look underpowered. What should be a highlight of the show disappoints, the elegance restricted to Dale’s lovely silky dress, trimmed with faux fur.
The other well-known numbers – accompanied by Stephen Ridley’s 11-strong orchestra – are pretty good, but lack the sweep, scope and general Wow! factor of the screen versions. To be fair, a theatre stage doesn’t have the space of a sound stage.
Amara Okereke and Phillip Attmore in Top Hat. Pic: Richard Pitt.
Peter McKintosh’s set is brilliant. Think giant Art Deco poached egg in glistening metals. The ‘yoke’ is a performing area on the revolve that swings around so one hotel room can quickly become another, or a hotel bar can suddenly appear, say.
It’s attached to a massive almost-clock face, whose curves are reflected all over the wider stage. It’s a fabulous piece of design reflective of a great-looking production overall, from the smallest glass to the Tiffany lamps.
Director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall populates the backgrounds with hotel guests and staff, Londoners and Venetians wandering around, occasionally getting involved in the action. Often the ensemble members also act as prop handlers, quickly swapping a table out and bringing in a desk, say.
While Okereke’s Dale spends much of the show feeling uncomfortable as Jerry chases her around, she finally grabs some agency and delivers the sexy Wild About You to great effect. Her voice is lovely, and her 1930s enunciation a treat, so even when she has dull solo Better Luck Next Time, the time spent isn’t wasted.
Okereke moves with the grace of a cat, and really shines delivering the dialogue, which includes some great one-liners and back and forths.
best comedy moments
The best comedy moments, though, are gifted to James Hume as Horace and Sally Ann Triplett as Madge, who don’t share a scene until the second act, but when they do it’s lightning in a bottle. They’re a fabulous partnership, as seen in the hilarious – and finally poignant – number Outside of That, I Love You.
The other musical highlight is Latins Know How, sung by Beddini as he prepares for a night of passion with his new bride Dale (it’s complicated). Alex Gibson-Georgio’s strutting, silly Italian is a great comic creation, and his pipes are quite remarkable.
As Bates the valet, James Clyde barely gets to sing, but speedily ingratiates himself with the audience via a sharp comic performance, full of funny accents as he rolls out one family saying after another – no two aunts seem to come from the same country.
By the end of the show all the characters find their happy place, and it’s pretty likely you will have too.
Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes.
Playhouse: 18 – 22 Greenside Place, EH1 3AA.
Tue 30 Sept – Sat 4 Oct 2025
Tue – Sat: 7.30pm; Wed, Sat mats: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
ENDS
