Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London
December 16, 2025
What a night! If you want a magical, classic musical, packed with Irving Berlin songs that you know and love, not to mention some wonderful dancing, wit and humour, all performed with elan, elegance and excellence, look no further than this Chichester Festival Theatre 2025 production of Top Hat.
Based on the evergreen 1935 Hollywood film of the same name staring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, this adaptation for stage by Matthew White and Howard Jacqueson, is glorious, sheer entertainment from start to finish.
Photo Johan Persson
Phillip Attmore, dancing the role of Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire), leads a terrific cast, every one of whom has talent and exuberance in bucketfuls. As the Broadway star engaged to appear in London, he is outstanding, completely engaging. His irrepressible sense of fun and love of mischief-making (at least until he meets Dale), is there in bucketfuls. He’s also a real all-rounder. His tapping is particularly superb as he also sings and acts his way through what is a whimsical, silly even, convoluted certainly, story.
Opposite Attmore, Amara Okereke more than holds her own as Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) in a performance packed with vibrance and energy. She also comes with a lot of lovely dry wit during her verbal jousts with Jerry.
Photo Johan Persson
Clive Carter gives a wonderfully rounded performance playing the just-a-little bumbling and much put-upon husband Horace Hardwick. As his wife, Madge, Sally Ann Triplett is nicely sassy as she busies herself with Dale’s love life.
Top Hat is essentially a good old-fashioned farce, and whether it’s the visual gags or snappy one-liners, spot-on timing is essential. The whole cast delivers time and time again, although the star is surely James Clyde as Bates, Horace’s wonderfully straight-faced valet, who butlers his way through increasingly impossibly ridiculous scenarios.
and Alex Gibson-Giorgio (Alberto Beddini) in Top Hat
Photo Johan Persson
The dancing, whether in Attmore’s fleet-footed solos or the big ensemble numbers, is a joy to watch, every tap on the beat, the ensemble in complete unison.
Directed and choreographed with her usual flair and precision, by the inimitable, Tony and Oliver Award winning Kathleen Marshall, the whole production is a triumph of screen-to-stage reworking.
Special mention must be made of Peter McKintosh’s set design, which makes liberal use of a revolving central half-moon that changes, seemingly effortlessly, from place to place, subtly reflected in a backdrop that gives us the skylines of the cities along the way.
Photo Johan Persson
Stephen Ridley conducts a small orchestra of 11 musicians, hidden away at the Queen Elizabeth Hall but who appear to be enjoying themselves as much as the performers on stage. Little wonder. What is not to like in Berlin’s timeless songs?
Yes, the story is ridiculous. Yes, the second half is perhaps a touch too long. But you still leave the theatre humming those tunes and wanting to see it all over again. Top Hat. Top show.
Top Hat is at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, to January 12, 2026.