After trying to warm up the folks in the stalls - remember pantomime front row terror when you're recruited by the principal boy - by the second act we were all arm-waving, singing along and drumming our arthritic fingers.

Sub-titled 'a fab celebration of the swinging sixties' this could have been end of the pier stuff or an anodyne garage CD compilation - but wasn't.

my ever-cynical husband was swaying to Let the Sun Shine In with the dazed expression of someone who remembers what he was doing the first time he heard it.

As Noel Coward said: 'There's nothing so potent as cheap music.

Phenomenally talented singers and dancers spritzed their way through the decade - from the early days of Carnaby Street (Downtown) via California Dreamin' to Pinball Wizard.

There were lightning costume changes, sensational strobe lighting and a real quality of musicianship from a group of just eight singers (who could also dance their socks off) and eight dancers (who could sing).

You waited for a favourite song to be murdered (always nice to be smarmily superior) but no rock numbers were sentimentalised or ballads overhyped.

There was a true ensemble feel to the production too with cast members genuinely seeming to look out for each other.

Cast members were so integrated I had to surf programme notes to come up with names; Darren Wright was more Four Seasonsish than the Four Seasons in Sherry Baby and Jane Doyle was a look and sound-alike Dusty Springfield.

Action surfed through high school party numbers, hard rock (great Stones performances guys), Everley Brothers, soul, country, Motown and Elvis.

The only place they couldn't score - and who could - was the Beatles take-off where even authentic Sergeant Pepper costumes failed to conjure up that adenoidal Scouse smoke-stained underpass.

But the androgynous, roguish Supremes had the front row on its collective feet.

Susan King