The four principals wisely make no attempt to emulate the performances everyone remembers – Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Vivian Blaine. My personal favourite was Celine Schoenmaker’s Sarah Brown – the elegant, upright, virginal missionary who has to become drunkenly amorous in about two minutes, courtesy of a couple of Bacardis. It takes an actor of rare skill to make that convincing.

Marisha Wallace’s Miss Adelaide was a delight, sadly sniffling while singing about how a person can develop a cold, and drawing new humour from the famous scene in which she tells Nathan Detroit that her mother thinks they have been married for 12 years and have five children.  At one point, from a narrow raised section of the stage, she leaned down to me and sang while inches away from my face, looking into my eyes, and I thought I was in Heaven. 

Andrew Richardson’s Sky Masterson, at once wistful good looks and tuneful cynicism, lets the audience into the world of the men who only come alive at night when gambling as he sings “My Time of Day”.

If I had to be picky, I wasn’t convinced that Daniel Mays’s immensely likeable Nathan Detroit could have lived on his wits all those years in the New York underworld, or inspired the sort of passionate love in Miss Adelaide that would induce her to wait 14 years for him. But what the hell? He sings and dances to perfection.