Betty Blue Eyes. Union Theatre.

When it premiered 2011, Cameron Mackintosh’s big bucks West End production of Betty Blue Eyes garnered rave reviews and three Olivier nominations. It then closed after just six months, having on many nights struggled to fill more than half the Novello’s available seats. Director Sasha Regan’s solid, well put together revival at the Union theatre, its first in-house productions since Covid, merits another look. Whether the gently satirical musical comedy will find its audience any better this time remains to be seen. As with Alan Bennett’s screenplay for the 1984 film A Private Function on which it is based, this is a show that is distinctly, indeed almost parochially English in both structure and attitude. Therein perhaps lies the trouble.

It is 1947. Wartime food rationing has not ended, in fact it is getting worse. Meat is scarce. Families are lucky to see more than a can of Spam on the dinner table. But there is a ray of sunshine in sight thanks to the impending wedding of Princess Elizabeth and fiancé Philip. Snobby small town local “man of substance” Dr Swaby (Stuart Simons), never one to miss a chance for self-promotion, sets about arranging a private celebratory dinner for the royal couple. In league with equally self-aggrandising local accountant Henry Allardyce (Josh Perry) and soppy solicitor Frances Lockwood (Tom Holt), Swaby is secretly paying a nearby farmer to fatten up an unlicensed pig to serve at the banquet.

Among those blatantly not invited to the bigwig’s ball are put-upon chiropodist Gilbert Chilvers (Sam Kipling) and wife Joyce (Amelia Atherton), whose appetite for brazen social climbing puts TV’s Hyacinth Bucket to shame. Miffed at being refused an invitation, the couple, who live with Joyce’s gluttonous, dementing Mother (Jayne Ashley), set about purloining the pig for their own table. Add into the mix the sinister, black leather coated Inspector Wormold (David Pendlebury) whose mission, or rather passion in life is to rid Yorkshire of unlicensed pork. The inspector’s determination to root out porcine wrongdoing complicates the plot and sets the scene for a fast-flowing and lightly entertaining farce.

Betty Blue Eyes cleverly captures the post-war zeitgeist of a hungry, small-town, small-minded, class-conscious England on the cusp of big changes. In the background, Prime Minister Clement Attlee proclaims the adage that ‘It’s Fair Shares for All’ and even the men-of-substance angrily grant that things in this “piss-stained, piss-poor, pisspot of a country” need to change. But, as one of the characters intones, “it is hard to dream on an empty stomach”. There is an echo here of the sufferings of today’s inflation burdened, Brexit divided, foodbank going British population – presumably this modern day resonance is one reason why the Union decided to give Betty Blue Eyes another outing. But charmingly odd as they are, it may be these wistful Dad’s Army type characters will struggle to speak to more than a small portion of London theatregoers.

Amelia Atherton is utterly fabulous as Joyce. The actor has the kind of face whose component parts seem to shoot off in different directions, each with their own dramatic agenda and comic rhythm. It is mesmerising to watch, more so in the Union’s intimate auditorium. She can sing too, most obviously in Nobody, a bittersweet ode to all the things this scion of a dry-cleaning entrepreneur could have been but is not. Sam Kipling is equally as good as the diffident, insecure Gilbert, whose unlikely sexual allure for many of the small-town housewives surfaces in the show’s best number Magic Fingers. His solo The Kind Of Man I Am, a mellow reflection on what it takes to love oneself as much as someone else, is beautifully rendered. Pendlebury as Wormold sporadically feels like he is channelling Les Misérables uber-villain Javert, but is great to watch, nonetheless.

The ensemble of 18 feels a little too large for the stage space available, which makes choreographer Kasper Cornish’s task all the harder. The latter has some inventive tricks with strings of sausages and broomsticks but there is a sense here, particularly in the jazz-infused number Another Little Victory, that bodies will collide at any moment. Regan’s direction is imaginative, the ballet-dancing butcher is a particularly deft touch, but in the end Betty Blue Eyes is still something of an odd, even brave choice for a revival.

Book: Ron Cowen & Daniel Lipman

Music: George Stiles

Lyrics: Anthony Drewe

Director: Sasha Regan