Half a hurrah for Hollywood

Time has not been kind to this 1930 satire of the movie business. Moss Hart and George S Kaufman show opportunists flocking to talkies-era Hollywood, where money and talent are squandered, where no one dares question the boss, but where a dumb innocent can succeed accidentally despite picking the wrong script.

Once in a Lifetime is not very funny or very sharp, and director Edward Hall tries to paper over its deficiencies by throwing expensive sets, stars like David Suchet, and an air of desperately forced jollity at it. Am I the only one seeing a parallel here? Apart from the bit about "accidental success", I mean.

If Hart and Kaufman's story sounds both familiar and surprisingly tame, it's because all the subsequent dramas that borrowed from it - including Singin' in the Rain and Barton Fink - also improved on it.

Here, a New York Vaudeville couple drag their borderline-autistic straight man, George, to California so they can pose as voice coaches for silent film stars. They're a pretty charmless trio and their snappy dialogue isn't up to much.

"What's a four-letter word for 'actor'," asks Lloyd Hutchinson's utterly bland Jerry, brandishing a crossword. "Dope!" says Victoria Hamilton's tediously sassy Mae. Meanwhile, Adrian Scarborough as the hapless George concentrates on blinking and not being swallowed by his nerdy costume. Oh my sides.

All three actors deserve better than this. It makes me wonder if the legendary wit of Thirties America has dated less well than that of England: Noël Coward's plays still amuse, but Dorothy Parker barely exists outside dictionaries of quotation. And once Kaufman and Hart move the action to Hollywood, the dialogue doesn't get any better. But the décor does.

Designer Mark Thompson builds a staggeringly lovely staircase for the hilariously named Hotel Stilton and a magnificent Deco film-studio lobby.

Edward Hall orchestrates a couple of good visual gags around the idea that every bellhop, cigarette girl and waiter is a wannabe Gary Cooper or Jean Harlow, but when he's forced back onto the script, he flounders.

Because the characters are so thin and the jokes so weak, he has everyone mugging and grinning and clowning and shouting, all the time. It's exhausting.

Talented performers are wasted in caricatures of real figures. As a vain, ignorant, Hedda Hopper-style journalist, Issy van Randwyck acts as if she can't get offstage fast enough. The excellent Tim McMullan's stroppy German director is part Stroheim, part Lang, and almost wholly unamusing.

The compromised playwright, drably played by Jonathan McGuinness, embodies the exact mixture of self-parody and selfcongratulation one expects when writers satirise their own profession.

David Suchet, nominally this production's star, in fact executes a deft, scenestealing cameo as the Goldwyn-esque studio head Herman Glogauer, his accent as thick as the cigar in his mouth. The character borders on offensive racial caricature, but in this dated show, it's a welcome relief.