The World Goes 'Round

The World Goes 'Round is an evening of songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, performed by a company of five with no plot to carry them and nothing to hide behind. Each number is staged as a small self-contained drama, and the cumulative effect is a portrait of a songwriting partnership rather than a story.

The material ranges right across the catalogue: torch songs, comic turns, duets that curdle halfway through, anthems that arrive earned rather than announced. Some of it is famous and some of it was rescued from shows that did not last, and the running order is arranged so that the funny numbers set up the sad ones. Performers take on a character for three minutes at a time and then let it go.

Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman and David Thompson conceived the revue, which first opened in 1991, ran for more than four hundred performances and took awards for outstanding musical revue. It has been staged steadily ever since by companies of every size, because what it needs is five singers, a small band and very little else.

The appeal is craft. Kander's melodies are deceptively simple, Ebb's lyrics do their real work in the second verse, and a good company can make a room laugh and then go completely quiet inside a single number. There is no book to hide behind and no spectacle to distract from the singing.

It suits audiences who care about songwriting and enjoy watching performers work without a net. It lands best live, where the turn from a joke to a confession happens in front of you and in real time.