REVIEW: The Smallest Show on Earth – at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Monday, November 23 to Saturday, November 28, 2015.

HARK back to the not so distant past. Certainly not as far back as the film comedy of the same title as this new musical - and you may recall top chef and Norwich City luminary, Delia Smith, shouting down a microphone at a football match… ’Come on! Where are you?’

The same could be said of the county’s theatregoers.

Just where on earth were you on the opening night of this engaging, energetic and excellent all-round show?

A pitifully small audience - while probably not the smallest audience on earth - was all but lost in the Malvern venue.

Had all those seated in the stalls moved forward they would probably have only filled the first half-a-dozen rows but it was they, and those in the circle, who were richly rewarded as the stay-aways missed a treat.

The title of this new musical ought to ring a distant bell with older readers, and younger film buffs, because it is based on that successful and most whimsical 1957 Ealing-feeling film comedy that featured such iconic names as Peter Sellers and Margaret Rutherford.

They played two of the original, geriatric staff members of a crumbling cinema, along with Bernard Miles, which is inherited, and given a new lease of life, by a young couple - played by Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna - who inherit it from a distant relative they can’t quite recall.

The Smallest Show was actually a British Lion, now owned by StudioCanal, film and it translates well into this stage adaptation and though Sellers and Rutherford set the bar so phenomenally high in the original film what we now have is every bit as charming if not a touch more appealing having garnered a host of Irving Berlin songs which the film didn’t have.

Several are well known hits - How Deep is the Ocean and Blue Skies to mention just two, and while others are not that easily recalled they still have quite an appeal.

Overall it works well. Boisterous, a wee bit whimsical with a good sprinkling of comedy from several great eccentric characters, and romance.

Liza Goddard (Mrs Fazackalee) shows she can knock out a good number and another well-known face from screen and stage, Brian Capron (Percy Quill), also impresses. And so they should considering all the film, television and stage credits they have.

Fine performances too from young loves Christina Bennington as Marlene Hardcastle and Sam O’Rourke who played Tom Fazackalee. They can dance, and they can sing, but on the vocal front it’s Laura Pitt-Pulford (Jean Spenser, wife of the Bijou cinema’s new owner) who leads the way.

She was recently the Mabel part of hit-musical Mack and Mabel and her voice is sheer quality.

The rest of the cast provided excellent support - particularly Matthew Crowe’s cross-dressing solicitor Robin Carter.

It’s cheery throughout with that feel-good factor as the Bijou battles with the Grand, and as the show is on the last leg of its UK tour it would be a pity to miss such a pleasurable treat.