All that jazz | 2 March 2017

It’s every impresario’s dream. Buy a little off-West End venue to try out stuff for fun. Andrew Lloyd Webber has snaffled up the St James Theatre (rebranded The Other Palace), which he intends to run as a warm-up track for new musicals. First off the blocks The Wild Party, a New York import set in the 1920s. We meet a couple of vaudeville veterans, Queenie and Burrs, whose romance has hit the rocks. To rekindle the flame they invite everyone they know around for a party. Hang on. A party? Booze, drugs, flirtation, seduction: the recipe for destroying a romance, not salvaging it. But never mind. The guests have started to arrive, direct from the Scott and Zelda Tribute Society. Everyone is talented, sophisticated and glamorously tragic. There’s an out-of-work diva, a washed-up boxer, a needy movie star on the rise, a gigolo named Black who only wears white and never says a word, and a pair of singing teenagers who may or may not be transvestites.