Hooray for Brollywood!

Sadler's Wells couldn't have chosen a better night to open its new production of Singin' in the Rain.

Yesterday's tropical downpour meant everyone arrived at the theatre in the right meteorological mood, drenched but smiling. You could almost hear people doobie doo-ing as they shook their umbrellas and and then watched Cooper do likewise.

Given the near perfection of the MGM original, director Paul Kerryson has wisely decided not to tinker. In keeping with the film, his Singin' is set in late Twenties Hollywood when the movie studios began making talkies.

It's a musical about making a musical film, with songs about entertainment and jokey dialogue about film-land. There is a square-jawed leading man, a foot-stamping diva and a sweetnatured songbird who finally gets her man.

Among the good things - and there are a lot - are the sets and costumes. Designer Robert Innes-Hopkins' clever double-sided back panel is both inexpensive and evocative - a movie set on one side and the hallucinatory cloudscapes of Hollywood dreams on the other.

Also good were the black and white film segments by Ray Scott-Johnson, as was the orchestra, a small but tight 15-piece band under the expert baton of Julian Kelly who somehow managed to keep the familiar songs fresh and new.

Ah, the songs. Hear Good Mornin', Make 'Em Laugh and Singin' In The Rain and you'll be humming all week. Adam Cooper, the former Royal Ballet dancer who shot to fame in Matthew Bourne's all-male Swan Lake, could do the songs justice most of the time, although his delivery is occasionally uneven.

However, his enunciation was clear, as was his American accent, while his choreography is best described as respectable-to-fair. The Broadway Melody sequence was especially good.

Vocally more consistent was Josefina Gabrielle as Cooper's sweetheart Kathy Selden, while Simon Coulthard was his perky sidekick Cosmo Brown. However, it was Ronni Ancona as the squeaky-voiced, air-headed Lina Lamont who stole the show. Best known for her Bafta-winning impersonations with Alistair McGowan, she creates genuine pathos during her What's Wrong With Me? routine.

Less good was the occasionally slow pace, the four leads not quite yet being a true team, and the Singin' In The Rain sequence, which had erratically squirting jets of water (someone call a plumber).