Calamity Jane: crowd-pleaser musical has blown in on tour

★★★

Calamity Jane is not like other girls. Period.

The cast of Calamity Jane, by Mark Senior

In the town of Deadwood, she is an enigma, as wild as her imagination but ultimately with a heart of gold.

Weilding her gun and kicking the bad guys into the dirt is Carrie Hope Fletcher in the role made famous by Doris Day. Fletcher, with her transportative singing voice and natural warmth, is an enthusiastic but subtly self-doubting Calamity, immediately taken by the jam-packed audience of nostalgia-chasing fanatics.

She's marveled at the epicentre of the mining town, a friend to all the locals - including oddball Rattlesnake (a hilarious Richard Lock), anxiety-driven saloon proprietor Henry Miller (Peter Peverley), his do-gooder niece Susan (Hollie Cassar), military man Danny Gilmartin (Luke Wilson), and a misunderstood actor-type Francis Fryer (a brilliant Samuel Holmes).

Matthew Wright's rope-lined stage encaptures another - like a puppet theatre inside a puppet theatre. It adds depth to the basic staging, which director Nikolai Foster fills with a mighty ensemble of actor-musicians, who lean against wooden posts and peer over balconies. There's a real sense of community being built. Pianos turn into stage coaches and ovens, wooden chairs into pedestals, and home-sewn curtains add a woman's touch to Calam's downtrodden cabin. But ultimately, the repetitive set feels too static, too like watching one frame of a Western movie.

Luckily, there's some gorgeous texture - not only from the instruments (Catherine Jayes is musical supervisor), but Tim Mitchell lights a perpetual golden hour, capturing sunlight in pipe smoke. Meanwhile, tealights cast star-shaped shadows against glass bottles and dust fills the air. The old-timely vibe plays into expectation, with Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster's toe-tapping tunes ringing through with Nick Winston's fast-footed, communal choreography; the women flashing long underwear and the men with thumbs in pockets.

The thin, well-trodden plot includes a case of mistaken identity, a love triangle, a makeover for a man, and a lovers-to-enemies trope. It, like the outdated messages it pushes, tires quickly as Calamity swaps guns for a gown to gain the desires of the irredeemable "Wild" Bill Hickock, who at least has an excellent voice from Vinny Coyle. As cigarette card beauty Katie Brown, Seren Sandham-Davies is an absolute gem. It's a shame their relationships with our anti-heroine are so fleeting - a romance blossoming from knocking off one another's hats, a friendship made and broken over a matter of days.

It has been over 70 years since audiences fell in love with Calamity Jane, and if the wiggling shoulders and wide smiles are anything to judge by, it's a production that won't be whip-crack-away-ing any time soon!