Billy starts the fire

Billy, Billy, what are you doing? You wrote some of the best songs ever sung, the anthems and laments of the American Dream, and anyone who's heard you belt out Innocent Man or Goodnight Saigon at Madison Square Garden or Wembley Arena won't ever forget it.

So why, how, did you let Uptown Girl and Big Shot and all those other monster hits get mixed up with a slim, sentimental plot that's best watched with your eyes closed?

It can't be the money and it can't be the fame, and it's certainly not the fans who love your songs just the way they are.

It can only be the choreographer, fellow American Twyla Tharp, a huge talent best known for her hi-low mix of ballet and street styles and for her work for blue-chip troupes like the Royal Ballet, but whose direction of this show falls well below her theatrical best.

The problem is that while Tharp is almost unmatched at pure dance daring, she's less accomplished at character and plot.

Watch a piece like In The Upper Room, currently in the rep of Birmingham Royal Ballet, and you're dazzled by her speed and precision and laugh-aloud good grace. The dancers jog and shimmy, and mix perfect arabesques with hip-hop shrugs.

Watch Movin' Out, the musical fresh in from Broadway, and you see flashes of brilliance amid great swathes of old-fashioned pump and grind that only cheesily connects movement to lyrics.

Movin' Out tells the story of five American friends who graduate from high school in the Sixties, get mixed up in the Vietnam war and lose their innocence. One dies, they're all tested, but love conquers all (think Grease meets The Deer Hunter).

Tharp, who both directs and choreographs, sets this oft-told story to 24 or so of Billy Joel's songs, ably performed by BBC Fame Academy contestant James Fox and a tidy 12-piece band, positioned aloft on a platform over the stage.

The mostly ballet-trained dancers move below, and they groove away at a rollicking pace. Rolling turns are piled on lightning spins, with high judo jumps following snappy kicks, and all done with nice pointy toes.