Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Top-notch tosh

<strong>Zorro</strong><br /> <em>Garrick</em> <strong>The Tailor and Ansty</strong><br /> <em>Old Red Lion</em>

issue 26 July 2008

Zorro
Garrick

The Tailor and Ansty
Old Red Lion

Is Zorro any good? Forget the show for a second, look at the marketing. The stars are English, the story is American and the music, by the Gypsy Kings, is French with a strong Spanish flavour. That’s half the Western hemisphere covered. Nice work, everyone.

Things start uneasily with a crowd of Romany dancers on stage performing a heel-bashing number that doesn’t do much more than rattle your fillings. Next the show hurtles from California to Barcelona and back, establishing the complex background of the central figure, Diego, a renegade cavalry officer who must wrest the Spanish colony of Los Angeles from the grip of an evil usurper, who was once his childhood pal.

It’s all top-notch romantic tosh with everyone prancing about in slashed shirts, tasseled jackets and velvet pantaloons held up with belts made of curtain-rope.

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