Let’s hear it for the girls...

Blonde Bombshells of 1943

LOOK up the words “Alan” and “Plater” in a dictionary and you will probably find them described thus: “gentle, affectionate humour”.

The playwright has made down-to-earth, no-nonsense characters his stock for decades. This play, adapted from a BBC TV drama, is no different.

On TV, Judi Dench played a former band leader in her late 60s, trying to rekindle the spark by getting the band together again for one last gig.

This musical play, packed with gorgeous tunes arranged here by familiar Coliseum MD Howard Gray, was adopted by Mark Babych at the Bolton Octagon in 2006 and has been unstoppable on tour since.

It takes us back to watch the band struggling its way through the full flood of the war years.

Back then, a Nissen hut was shelter, getting a pair of nylons meant doing unspeakable things with a US soldier, and an all-girl band would hire a nun and a schoolgirl, so long as Mother Superior and the head didn’t mind.

Now that’s liberal education for you . . .

So, if on stage the pace is slow and the tale seemingly slight — an extended audition session, a bit of a jam session, then the band’s one and only shot at radio with a concert in Hull — we really don’t mind that much: the journey, with its chat and characters, from lonely war widows to career musicians, is more important than the resolution.

What Plater doesn’t make explicit is the story’s real-life background, how hundreds of all-women bands toured and played to raise morale during the war and were always short of players.

The company is fairly strong, with few weaknesses; perhaps a little overacting here and there, and a little under-rehearsal elsewhere. But charm and humour overcome most faults.