ACE OF CLUBS Union Theatre, London SE1

The Union Theatre has an excellent policy of reviving musicals which nobody else would risk reviving. There will be lots of people who will want to see Ace of Clubs precisely because it is by Noël Coward and they won’t mind, even if he show is as bad as everybody said it was. At its premiere in 1950 when Coward took his curtain call he was booed. The story is set in a seedy Soho night club in post-war Britain, a black-market world of stolen nylons and stolen French perfumes. The terrible script, which rarely sounds as if it was written by Coward, sounds like the screenplay for a tacky British B crime film. Jack Thorpe-Baker’s production turns the auditorium into a cramped nightclub with the audience sitting on hard chairs at tables. The setting is the best thing about the show.