Sweet ending fails to excite

If a man murders the woman he loves with poisoned chocolate mousse, does that make it a cream passionnel?

Maybe not, yet there is no doubt that the death-by-dessert ending to Greenwich Theatre's Sadly Solo Joe lifts an otherwise lamentable datinggame plot from the slackly humorous to the blackly humorous, and hints that this musical could have life beyond the grave.

For the grave, unfortunately, is where it seems to be heading at the moment, despite a talented cast laden with oomph and vocal powers that set the whole Greenwich Theatre ringing. Paul Ryan and Peter Readman's work was picked from over a hundred that have been submitted to the theatre's festival Music Futures over the last three years, but while it boasts some juicy numbers, its initially old-fashioned plot and flabby script induces a leaden feeling in toes that are supposed to be tapping.

The setting is Manhattan, and David Collis's backdrop presents a clamour of New York skyscrapers that have been photographed from above. The shifting scenes depicted in front of this backdrop are all dominated by Joe (played by the vocally versatile, stage-dominating Clive Rowe), who is a virgin at the age of 38, and possesses a miraculous memory that has made him a king contestant of every quiz show, even if he has never managed to be Prince Charming in anyone's life.

Scriptwriter Paul Ryan was keen to create a vehicle for Rowe, who won an Olivier Award in 1997 as Best Supporting Actor in Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre. However, it seems a waste of Rowe's swaggeringly confident stage-presence to cast him as a clichÈd romantic failure, desperate for a girl: and the significant comic potential in giving him limitless power of recall is never truly explored.

Despite such failures, Vivien Parry proves a gutsy femme fatale as Odetta, her voice effortlessly matching Rowe's. Several changes are needed, however, to create the potent musical dynamite Greenwich is searching for.

Sadly Solo Joe