There’s just no tune as exciting as a show tune in two-four.
When it’s played you can just tell there’s footlights everywhere.
When it’s played you can just smell the greasepaint in the air.
It’s the smart beat that’s inviting. It’s a heart beat of the score.
There’s just no tune as exciting as a show tune in two-four.

So go the lyrics to “Show Tune”, one of Jerry Herman’s early ear worms – from the off-Broadway musical revue Parade. Herman had spent the first part of his career contributing songs to off- Broadway (and one Broadway) revue when, in 1961, producer Gerard Oestreicher commissioned him to write the music and lyrics for a new musical about Israel. The result was Milk And Honey, which got good reviews and ran for a healthy 543 performances. By the end of the decade, however, Herman’s name would become synonymous with Broadway – and the very idea of a show tune.

Jerry’s Girls, the 1981 show created by Herman and Larry Alford, returns to the revue format – lifting songs from Herman’s great Broadway scores and weaving them through a basic plot and setting, but crucially giving three star performers chance to shine. The new production at the Menier Chocolate Factory stars West End star Cassidy Janson, Julie Yammanee, and Herman veteran Jessica Martin (who appeared in the original London production of Mack & Mabel, and in the more recent Southwark Playhouse revival).

The three ladies all have enough suggestions of character to create clearly defined performances, but not so much that overwhelms their own personalities shining through. The setting is the dressing room and stage of a theatre, and the performers range from the ingénue (Yammanee), the comedienne (Janson) and the veteran (Martin) as they overcome their personal woes and go onstage with a “show must go on” attitude.

Within this, they are given opportunities to shine both individually and collectively as singers, dancers and actresses. Particular highlights included Martin’s “I Don’t Want To Know” (Dear World), Yammanee’s “Look What Happened To Mabel” (Mack & Mabel) and Janson’s “If He Walked Into My Life” (Mame).

Janson might just be one of the best theatre vocalists of her generation. Even with the sheer volume of material she has to tackle in this show, she never puts a note wrong, with every phrase from comedy to big Broadway belting perfectly placed.

Uptempo company numbers also bring some lovely moments of comedy and vocal harmony, including the hilarious “Take It All Off”, the mash-up ode to movie-making of “Just Go The Movies” (A Day In Hollywood/A Night In The Ukraine) and “Movies Were Movies” (Mack & Mabel) and the finale trio arrangement of “I Am What I Am” (La Cage Aux Folles).

One show was curiously absent from proceedings – Herman’s 1974 musical The Grand Tour which, in fairness, was his shortest Broadway run, but other flops were represented (Mack & Mabel and Dear World), and it would have been nice to hear something from this score.

The production is brought together by Hannah Chissick’s direction, Matt Cole’s choreography, Paul Farnsworth’s set and costume design, Philip Gladwell’s lighting design, Mike Walker’s sound design and, most crucially, Sarah Travis’s musical work which includes supervision, direction and orchestration. Travis (who worked with the late Dame Gillian Lynne on the UK premiere of Dear World in 2013) conducts the all-female band from the piano, and the orchestrations strike the right balance between the vaudeville pit band suggested by the setting, and evocations of the original arrangements.

One talent shines above all, however, and that is Herman himself who, though humble in his approach to theatre, possessed an undeniable talent not just for composition and lyric writing but for putting a smile on the faces of audiences like no other writer.

With the feast of legendary show tunes on offer, Jerry’s Girl’s might just have more great songs than the rest of London’s shows put together.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️