Musicals and opera review: Jet Set Go!

Published on Friday 22 August 2008 21:11

JET SET GO! **** MUSICAL THEATRE @ GEORGE SQUARE (VENUE 37)

SCRIPTED by the precociously talented 21-year-old Jake Brunger, and brought to life by a charismatic cast of young amateurs, Jet Set Go! is one of those rare, unexpected delights that enliven any Fringe. Performed, appropriately enough, in a hot, cramped Portakabin, this vibrant musical charts an assured course between modern cynicism for the aviation industry and sporadic bursts of flamboyance capturing all the glamour of flying's heyday. On a return flight from London to New York, with the pilots and stewards opining their love lives, Take Note Theatre could easily have settled for a camp series of clichs. But instead this is a production that's warm, funny and wonderfully scored by Pippa Cleary, epitomised by the bawdy, beautiful lament A Simple Valley Song, in which Katie Birtill, as the lovelorn Welsh stewardess Hayley, almost takes the roof off. The characterisation is spot-on, tenderly comic and endearing. Alex Johnston is deliciously snide as the preening Ryan, forever "stuck" with J-Lo or Madonna in first-class. Yet he pines for and prowls after the captivating Mark Senior, who shares the show's most touching moments with Birtill, pleading to the skyscrapers If I Could Find A Boy. Nick Cork, as the tongue-tied first officer, owns and capably delivers many of the best lines, while Kaytee Crook and Tom Lee are excellent foils as the oversexed Puerto Rican stewardess and arrogant captain. Without a note or step out of place, this should be a company to catch up with in 2009.

Until tomorrow, 7pm