It may be a Broadway adaptation of a Hollywood film but An American in Paris is quite unique among musicals. English Director/Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon has created a dance driven show with Gershwin songs that feels so fresh, at times you’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve swapped the West End for a sophisticated night of contemporary dance at Sadler’s Wells.

The opening number is unusually quiet and delicate for a musical, you can almost hear the dancers slippers across the stage as screens and projections fly in out behind them, unfolding the scene as War ends in Paris, soldiers come home and the city starts to breath again. Demobbed American Jerry (Robert Fairchild), misses his boat home and sketch-book hand, starts a new life in Paris. Stumbling into a bar he finds, Adam (David Seadon-Young) with his wounded leg and bumbling cynicism at the piano then rich Parisian heir Henri (who’s been working for the resistance) joins them to sing, ‘I got Rhythm’.

The decision to opt for this period, unlike the film (1951), deepens the simple story of three men, all involved with the same beautiful girl, Lise (Leanne Cope). Instead it becomes about recovering from the War; coping with loss, secrets and burning desires. Seen through the eyes of these young artists, it explores the rich wonders of the imagination in the darkest of times.

For those that require a sequins and feathers fix, there’s a classic Big Broadway number but it’s cleverly placed in the imagination of Henri (Hadyn Oakley) who longs to break free of his family expectations and become a singer before dissolving back to his ‘reality’.

This idea of the dance within the imagination is used to extraordinary effect in the second act when Lise performs the dance within a dance and Robert Fairchild glides into her ‘mind’, dressed in skin tight black t-shirt and smoking gaze. I defy anyone to resist this incredibly seductive performance. Fairchild and Cope do not need words to tell this story.

‘An American in Paris’ proves there is such a thing as a classy juke-box musical, though unexpectedly, George and Ira Gershwin’s songs are not the stand out moments. It’s the dancing which reaches the sublime, floating and diving on a cloudscape of familiar orchestral themes.

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