Louis Lippman Barry Martin Francis X Gilhooley Don Fellows Matthew A Fulton Ian Burford Senator Robert E. Lyons Reg Eppey Senator Carver Jones Roger Martin Alexander Throttlebottom Michael Winsor John P Wintergreen Gavin Lee Sam Jenkins Jonjo O'Neill Diana Devereux Sarah Redmond Mary Turner Fiona Benjamin Miss Benson Sarah Bayliss French Ambassador Peter Gale Lynsey Britton, Saskia Butler, Leigh Constantine, Lucy Cound, Zoe Dawson, Jane Mark, Brett Jones, Alan Morely, Joseph Pitcher, Tony Stansfield Music Director Jonathan Gill Director Jonathan Best Choreographer Stephen Mear "London premiere" Now we've got a president who can really sing and dance. Of thee I sing, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, and book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, is surprisingly toothless as satire, if you know Strike up the Band. But in this energetic and tremendously enjoyable production at the Bridewell, it turns out to be neat, light entertainment with a few wonderfully absurd moments and a hint of astringency. As a campaign gimmick, John P. Wintergreen announces that he will marry the winner of a beauty contest if he is elected president. In the thirty seconds between the announcement and the winner claiming her prize, he falls in love with and proposes to Mary Turner, a down-home American girl who bakes amazing corn muffins. Their romance and marriage replace politics as the substance of the campaign and his presidency. The contest winner, Diana Devereux, a dodgy southern belle, tries to have Wintergreen impeached and divorced, but he and Mary fend off disaster by regaining public support with a love duet, and finally by producing twins. Devereux has to marry the Vice President. There is a general point here about focussing on the private lives of public figures, but the substance seems to be that John and Mary's true love is always also a collection of songs designed to endear them to the public, and of course, to the audience of the show. Which they did, and do, up to a point. I wasn't totally convinced by the broadcast of the Opera North semi-staged performance last year. The music and lyrics, as well the plot, have an awful lot derived from Gilbert and Sullivan, signalled by a lift from Pirates in the opening song. The senators and secretaries are comic cut-outs who might belong in a Broadway Melody chorus, and the French Ambassor -- threatening a diplomatic incident because Devereux claims French descent -- is a funny foreigner par excellence with a few great surreal lines. And there aren't any very memorable blues-based numbers, or anything that's unmistakably elegaic Geshwin in the persistently cheerful score. But there's a lot of craft and wit in there. (Think of the title song, whose first six notes are about as far from the setting of the same words in "My country 'tis of thee" as you could get, with "baby" thrown in.) Done at speed, and with some cracking dancing closer to Bob Fosse than Busby Berkeley in spirit, it works amazingly well. The performers all seemed to be enjoying it enormously. Fiona Benjamin was poised if a drop thin vocally as Mary. (She sounded as if she were used to being miked. Although there were often mikes on stage, the production was all acoustic except for an electrical keyboard and some recorded sound.) Sara Redmond was excruciating as Diana Devereux. Her screechy high notes were exactly right for the ear-bashing jiltee, though I'm not sure that she was doing it deliberately. But she found the hint of Porgy and Bess in her lament, I was the most beautiful blossom, before it was denatured by repetition. Gavin Lee was cutely obnoxious as Wintergreen, more Peter Mandelson in manner than Bill Clinton, let alone FDR, but with a fine in-period singing voice. Jonjo O'Neil and Sarah Bayliss were similarly spot-on as the mainly decorative main couple in the ensemble. There was a good crop of party men, bathing beauties and journalists. The supreme court judges consisted of three singers with two extra heads on their hands, which was bizarrely funny. Peter Gale did a very amusing turn as the French ambassador, a sort of ultra-camp Maurice Chevalier, and considerably more convincing than his words and music suggest. The five piece orchestra, perched as usual on the balcony of the former swimming bath, sounded a bit thin, but once the singers started, they filled the echoing space impressively, playing neatly and with great energy. Ahem. I forgot Michael Winsor as, erm, what's his name, the Vice President. He was a model of insubstantiality.