9 to 5. What a way to earn a living!

9-5. What a way to earn a living.

When the curtain had come down and the thunderous applause had stopped, Bonnie Langford had thanked the audience who had once again shown their unanimous approval of the hit West End musical 9 to 5. We began to wonder whether we'd ever seen such a wonderful display of tongue in cheek, knock about fun on a Friday night. For this was the jokey reference that Ms Langford had made in relation to the day of the week. On this occasion she was kindly asking the audience to contribute towards a charity and a vast majority fully recognised this benevolent gesture.

9 to 5 was a foot tapping, wise cracking, thoroughly enjoyable showbiz gallop back to the 1980s when mobile phones had just broken onto the high tech market and looked remarkably like bricks with wires hanging from them awkwardly. Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet were dominating the British music charts and the financial stock market was swimming with money and excitingly lucrative wheeling and dealing. It was an age of opportunity, quite possibly selfishness, and greed with just a sprinkling of big hair, rampant materialism and a dash of Margaret Thatcher.

In the middle of all this madness and maelstrom, there was 9 to 5, a film that captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s American dream. Ronald Reagan was the American president, the ruthless money makers of New York were raking in their millions of dollars by the week, month and year, the huge corporations and conglomerates were at their wealthiest and a certain Donald Trump was one of those emergent American businessmen who earned several millions, became bankrupt and then crawled up the so called greasy pole of capitalism when fame called and the rest, as they say, is history.

The silver screen version of 9 to 5  featured the permanently smiling Dolly Parton who was almost as voluptuous as the production itself and a whole supporting cast of bubbly, wannabe and fanatically aspirational ladies who just want to get to the top as quickly as possible. Natalie Mcqueen, beautifully taking the role of Dolly Parton, is both blonde, effervescent as a bottle of champagne, brimming with chutzpah and confidence, a woman of both substance and runaway ambition. Mcqueen delivers one of those show stopping and memorable performances that you still find yourself remembering long after the West End rickshaws have gone.

Our story begins with the uncontrollably lecherous and cigar smoking Franklyn J. Hart, the head of Consolidated, one of those high profile companies that used to hire and fire their secretaries at the drop of a hat. Richard Taylor Woods, skilfully taking the place of the absent Brian Conley, plays the role of the dreadfully womanising Hart, forever chasing Doralee around his office like a labrador on heat. He then continuously woos and seduces Doralee as if determined to get his woman. Hilariously sitting down, the chair sends Hart toppling backwards and revenge is sweet.

We are now taken on a crazy, colourful, outrageous roller coaster of dynamic dance sequences with frequent nods to the Dolly Parton classic 9 to 5 and variations on a theme. After persistent advances and glorious rejections, all of the three secretaries Doralee Rhodes, Caroline Sheen as Violet Newstead and Chelsea Halfpenny as the equally as competitive and ambitious Judy Bernly plot the ultimate come uppance when the boss Hart goes too far. What follows would have most of us in giggling raptures.

Hart, by now groping at thin air rather than women, is strung up in sado masochism gear, chains, pins and leather stifling his every next move on the girls. By the interval we watch with nothing but gleeful hilarity as Hart is left suspended in the air with tape across his mouth and an audience who can do nothing but roar with laughter. All of Hart's lustful intentions are now reduced to nothing but a hovering figure with egg on his face and a giant sized ego which has now been severely deflated.

In the second half we are left with nothing but a whole series of accusations implying that Hart has stolen money, indulging in both fraud, deception and embezzlement. More scheming and conniving ensures that Hart ends up with nothing but battered pride hurt and not a single shoulder to cry on. Now threatening to kill one of his secretaries, Hart suffers humiliation and a dramatic fall from grace. The ladies win their day.

Throughout 9-5 we watch with some delight spectacularly colour co-ordinated sets with blues, greens, reds, yellows magically transferred to filing cabinets, water coolers, swivelling seats and desks wih unashamed style. This is a musical that successfully keeps its tongue in its cheek because just for a while you are taken on a whistle stop tour of a giddily affluent America where big bucks and millions of dollars are almost ritually exchanged and the ladies, who demand both dignity and respect, win the day quite triumphantly. Some of us loved this heady nostalgia trip back into an era that revelled in a  sudden 1980s explosion of victorious feminism, an age when senseless sexism was given a vigorous shove out of the door marked exit. Let's hear it for the girls.