Top Hat

One of my favourite musicals growing up was Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I watched it countless times as we had it on video at home. Yes, you heard me–not DVD but video. That’s how old I am. I loved it so much as a child that I recorded the songs from my television set while the movie was playing by holding a cassette recorder up to the speakers. The sound quality was awful but this was long before music streaming services and at least I could play the songs over and over which I did.

I longed to tap dance and would make comical attempts at it but of course unless you have someone teach you how you can’t pick up tap dancing from watching a musical. Now as an adult I’ve been fortunate enough to get lessons and while I’ll never be an Eleanor Powell I can now do a time step, a Shirley Temple, pull backs and ripples. I’m proud just to know what those words mean.

Naturally when I saw Top Hat was coming to Aberdeen I bought tickets and we saw it today.

I loved every minute of it. It was true to the original film – the story, the dialogue, even the dance choreography and outfits worn by Dale Tremont very closely followed the original. There were a few additional numbers with solos for Madge and Beddini but these added to the show. The characters adopted many of the mannerisms of the original cast with Horace Hardwick perfectly portrayed as the bumbling husband, Bates as the eccentric manservant, and Beddini as the flamboyant Italian. Indeed I would almost go so far as to say the Beddini today improved on the original. He was excellent. It was very funny too with a classic mistaken identity storyline and punchy dialogue. And of course all these alongside Irving Berlin’s timeless songs. I had to refrain from singing along as that would have annoyed the people sitting near us but I couldn’t stop myself from mouthing the words.

Today was the last day for the show in Aberdeen, sadly. If it comes to you then I absolutely recommend it. I believe they’re heading to Norwich, Salford and Southampton next.