Audience participation is not something you associate with the oh-so-chic Donmar, but Clive Rowe certainly didn't let a little thing like that spoil his party. After all, this is a man who knows how to dress down for an occasion.
The title of his show, Divas at the Donmar, has a whiff of diamonds and slinky gowns, but we shall have to wait for future offerings from Sian Phillips and Michael Ball to provide that. The amiable Rowe turned up in a green anorak. Before long he had us all happily singing the chorus to that major classic of 20th-century music, Shout - a song made famous by Lulu. If he had suggested that we all conga around Seven Dials we would have been fighting to join the line.
Rowe is a big man with an even bigger personality. Best known for his Olivier award-winning performance as Nicely Nicely in the National's production of Guys and Dolls and as Mr Cellophane in Chicago, here he reinvents the cabaret, a form that has been quietly expiring for almost half a century. He doesn't exactly breathe new life into it, but he does turn it on its head, treating the audience as if we all were close friends that he has invited back to his place.
Using music to take us through his life - from his early fascination with his mother's records of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Matthis and The Platters to his first professional audition for Porgy and Bess - Rowe applies his chestnut voice to the classic and the not-so-classic. It strikes me as a pity that the autobiographical format means that we get more Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins than we do God Bless the Child, Rowe's devastatingly emotional version of the old Billie Holiday number. You long for more songs that he can really get his lungs into.
But this is an endearing, honest evening that celebrates a major talent and an unpretentious man who is very easy to listen to - and just as easy to like.
• Until September 8. Box office: 020-7369 1732.
