"Dorothy who?" quips the eponymous heroine at the start of this delightful musical anthology. And it is true that only the cognoscenti - or friends of Dorothy - are likely to be aware of the contribution made by lyricist Dorothy Fields to some 19 Broadway shows and 30 Hollywood movies. But if David Kernan's celebration proves any general point it is that Fields was the consummate showbiz professional.
In fact when she started writing songs with Jimmy McHugh for the Cotton Club in the late 20s she was known as the "50 dollars a night girl": not because she could turn tricks but because she could turn a neat phrase. And what is striking is her infinite adaptability. The songs she wrote with Jerome Kern for the Astaire-Rogers movies - standards such as A Fine Romance and The Way You Look Tonight - have a classy elegance that matches the top hat and tails world portrayed. At the other end of the spectrum her lyrics for Cy Coleman's Sweet Charity in 1966 have a tart sassiness entirely suited to a show about the ups and downs of a New York taxi-dancer.
On the evidence presented Fields was a lyricist who ad justed to the demands of the score in front of her; and her self-effacement carries through into her private life about which we learn little other than that she came of a showbiz family and went through a depressive down period in the early 1960s.
But, given that she wrote 500 songs, there are some rich pickings and delightful discoveries: not least a number that begins "I'm in a bit of a twitch over a witch I met in Ipswich" from a show called Redhead and Welcome to Holiday Inn from Seesaw in which a lascivious receptionist gives a new twist to the idea of room service.
Watching the show it struck me that anthologies are often more enjoyable than full blown musicals: you get the plums without having to sit through the duff stuff. And Kernan, aided by choreographer Nick Winston, stages the songs neatly with a talented cast of five.
Angela Richards endows Fields herself with a wry detachment and delivers one of her lyrics, He Had Refinement, in the highly comic baby-voiced style of Judy Holliday. And she is elegantly supported by the self-satirising Robert Meadmore and the slit-skirted Rebecca Lock. Joy at the end was unconfined at a show that serves up old standards while also taking us into fresh Fields and pastures new.
Until July 21. Box office: 020-7226 1916.