Reality star's Fever pitch

When Rebecca Dent triumphed on the TV talent show Musicality, millions of Channel Four viewers felt all warm inside. There she was, top of the bill in a special one-night-only performance of Chicago, a Lancashire barmaid hollering as skilfully as the West End professional whose role she had borrowed.

Except that Rebecca Dent was rather more than that. It's certainly true that, in common with a good percentage of Equity members, she was spending much of her time pulling pints. But she was also a professional dance coach and a graduate of Salford University's well-regarded performing arts course. So casting her in the long-running stage version of Saturday Night Fever was hardly outrageous. It wasn't like giving the part to Natasha Kaplinsky or Bez.

Saturday Night Fever is, of course, based on the 1977 film. And in the hands of adaptor Nan Knighton and director Arlene Phillips, a sweaty cinematic exercise in social realism has been transformed into two hours of dreary theatrical kitsch; a back-catalogue singalong so slackly put together that it's hard to believe that Ben Elton didn't have a hand in it.

You suspect the most energetic work went into choreographing the curtain cal and the cast's radio mikes are so huge and obtrusive that the show often looks like a Seventies theme party thrown by the staff of a call centre. Cannily, the producers have limited their risks by casting Dent as Annette, the wannabe disco queen who pines for the attention of the snake-hipped Tony Manero (Stephane Anelli).

The script never asks her to be graceful or sexy. Instead, she is required to muff her only dance with Tony and spend most of the rest of the night protesting about his interest in a fleet-footed rival named Stephanie (Zoe Ebsworth).

Although the part is underwritten, Dent makes the most of its comic possibilities, galumphing with her elbows stuck out like Old Mother Riley, striking a gawky pose on the margins.

There's not a hint of amateurism in her performance. Indeed, it becomes painfully obvious that her acting and singing skills are substantially more developed than those of Ebsworth.

Ebsworth has a CV 10 times longer than Dent, but her command of the Brooklyn accent is lamentable - and when she attempts to sing in it, her voice becomes a monotone gurgle, like a defenceless animal being flushed down a lavatory. Dent, conversely, keeps her New York vowels in good working order, and never hits a bum note.

So last night at the Apollo Victoria, no new star was born and no ill-prepared celebrity made a fool of herself. A trained musical theatre actress turned up for work. If only the work had been more rewarding.

Saturday Night Fever