FOR years, visitors to England, particularly from the USA, have headed for London to see “a show” – apparently whatever it might be. That description of musical theatre has caught on, and now the popularity of the big musical spectacle, often an adaptation of a hit film, draws the crowds to the West End. Sometimes it’s the stars who are the main attraction, sometimes the familiar and beloved songs, sometimes the mere fact that it is a huge spectacle of sound and vision, with the best lights and costumes and dancing that talent and technology can provide.

In the provinces we sometimes get what are called Number One Tours at our largest theatres, where the maximum bums can be accommodated on seats to offset the cost of mounting these vast shows. This summer we have one at a smaller venue, the pretty and historic Theatre Royal in Bath which seats 1,000 fewer than Bristol Hippodrome and where Sister Act is playing until 17th August. It started life as a film in 1992, starring Whoopie Goldberg and Maggie Smith. It was adapted for the stage, opened in Pasadena in 2006 and came to London’s West End in 2009. Since then it has been produced in theatres around the world, acquiring a huge following.

In case you don’t know, it all starts in the 1970s when Philadelphia nightclub singer Deloris Van Cartier sees her married lover Curtis shoot a man dead. She dashes to the nearest police precinct, where the sergeant is former school friend Steady Eddie, and he has always had a crush on her. Eddie suggests that the best place for Deloris to hide from Curtis is the local convent, run by the Sisters of Perpetual Sorrow, and itself under threat of sale to developers. In the original film, The Whoopster played Sister Deloris, whose larger-than-life character has become an iconic leading lady, literally leading the nuns to greatness (and a gig for the Holy Father) by changing their approach to hymn singing and chanting.

You have to have a nostalgic love of both the music and the fashions of the 1970s to fully appreciate this musical … and apparently millions do. Nuns seem to capture the imagination of musical lovers – think Sound of Music. Mothers Superior have a particular place in our hearts, and the one in Sister Act richly deserves hers, especially when she’s played by Wendi Peters, whose brand of wry humour and big heart is ideal for the role.

She is joined by Landi Oshinowo in the central role of Deloris, a woman whose burning ambition for stardom has blinded her to the friendless reality of her life and who finds Sisterhood to be a much more reliable and comforting community. Alfie Parker is an engaging Eddie, and Eloise Runnette a plucky postulant.

It’s a feel-good story with 70s-style songs and dances that get the audience into the mood from the first number, and if anyone in the theatre, educated at a convent, notices the glaring anomalies of early-20-something altar boys and the parish priest in disco gear, and (forgive me Father, for I have sinned) the conductor doubling as the Bishop of Rome, so what … it’s all part of the fun.

The eight-piece orchestra ensures that the whole evening goes with a hi-nrg funky, soulful seventies swing. You don’t leave this show singing the songs, but you leave feeling the beat.

GP-W