APART from Tony Blair's reassurances that actually he really gets on with Gordon Brown, has there ever been a more suspect declaration of affection uttered in the English language than "I Love The 1980s"?

What, indeed, was there to love? Thatcher. The Poll Tax. Yuppies. The Falklands War. Entire communities destroyed by pit closures. Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was a desperate howl into the decade's gaping cultural void, a satirical "I Hate The 1980s" epic which has since developed into one of contemporary literature's most lucrative brands.

The patented Townsend political satire dressed as teenage drama style does not immediately scream out for musical adaption.

The show features some truly terrible songs, tunes so weak that even the extremely talented Workshop Theatre folk struggle to rescue them. With these songs punctuating the narrative apparently at random, otherwise poignant scenes are undermined by the threat of a clumsy musical dnouement.

So it is to the cast's credit that in every other respect this performance is a triumph. The Workshop Theatre do what they can with the music, and go to town with the drama.

The show is full of eccentric characters, painted in broad Benny Hill strokes by a mixture of professional and amateur players shamelessly overacting one another off the stage.

Rob Peters' Bert is a Roald Dahl's Twit of a man, an embittered Woodbine-smoking old communist, a real dirty old man. Worse still is Alex Papachristou-Cox's Mr Lucas, a sleazy, predatory womaniser, all cheap aftershave and cheaper pick-up lines. Good stuff.

Luke Adamson's Adrian is a jittering goodie bag of hormonally addled ticks and insecurities, in turns heartbreakingly sad and laugh-out-loud funny. He's like Charlie Chaplin playing Morrissey. It's almost enough to make you love the 1980s.

Updated: 08:35 Monday, July 18, 2005