Giles Woodforde enjoys an all-singing and dancing production of Crazy for You at the Watermill, Sonning

“A town full of singing cadavers.” That’s how Deadrock, Nevada, is described to Bobby Child, a bank executive who is ordered to go and close down the town’s ailing, debt-ridden theatre.

The trouble is that Bobby fancies a career on stage, not life as a grasping banker. And that ambition is fired up a hundredfold when he gets to Deadrock and spars with the feisty Polly, daughter of the theatre’s owner.

All of which forms the storyline to the musical Crazy for You, which started life as Girl Crazy, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, but was revamped in 1992 with a new plot, and several extra numbers imported from elsewhere in the Gershwin catalogue.

Now Crazy for You has been chosen as the Watermill’s 2016 musical. Expectations ride high for this production, for this tiny theatre on the Oxfordshire/Berkshire border has always punched way above its weight with musicals – past shows have transferred to the West End, and even onto Broadway.

New Watermill boss Paul Hart has never directed a musical before, so the stakes are inevitably considerable. But he takes to the genre like a duck to water. In particular, he shows a great aptitude for slapstick right from the start when Bobby (Tom Chambers) goes for an audition with big-shot (in his own opinion) New York producer Bela Zangler (Peter Dukes). The audition is a disaster: performing K-ra-zy for You, Bobby ends up landing heavily on Zangler’s foot. Later on, out in Deadrock, two, identical-looking Zanglers appear: the resulting case of mistaken identity results in one of the funniest comedy routines I have seen in a very long time.

And then there is the Gershwin score – 20 numbers, performed by a 14-strong cast of actor-musicians to sparkling choreography by Nathan M Wright: I Got Rhythm is a particular knockout. It’s invidious to pick out individuals from such a strong ensemble cast, but Caroline Sheen is a stand-out Polly. On press night, the singing and instrumental playing was occasionally a spot wayward, but this simply adds to the rumbustious, rough-hewn atmosphere of a production that’s good-hearted and entertaining in spades.

Giles Woodforde 5/5