Strike Up the Band review – cheese-war satire roasts the American whey

Satire, George S Kaufman said, is what closes on Saturday night. He spoke from bitter experience since this anti-war, anti-capitalist show, for which he wrote the book and George and Ira Gershwin the music and lyrics, died an early death in 1927. It is that version, rather than the softer rewrite that made it to Broadway in 1930, that is now getting a rare revival and it proves to be a bizarre curiosity rather than a lost masterpiece.

The plot hinges on a self-aggrandising tycoon taking America to war with Switzerland over the latter’s rejection of a hefty tariff on imported cheese. Kaufman makes his political points through a whimsical absurdity that reminds us he wrote for the Marx brothers and some of his shafts hit home: American patriots robustly declare “God is on our side” and when battle is joined, a first world war veteran announces: “We don’t know what we’re fighting for but we didn’t know the last time.”

The problem is that the Gershwin score seems at odds with the satirical intent. The title song sounds like an old-fashioned rabble-rouser and the most durable romantic number, The Man I Love, could have come from any Gershwin show.

Mark Giesser’s revival would benefit from pruning and a better balance between the singers and the seven-strong band. There are good performances from Richard Emerson as the big cheese anxious to defend the American whey, Beth Burrows as his mutinous daughter, and Charlotte Christensen and Adam Scott Pringle as the young lovers. But, even in the age of Trump’s trade wars, the show feels like a historic relic.

• Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London, until 31 March