IN his artistic directorship at York Theatre Royal, John Doyle had a thing for actor-musician shows. Seven years on, he still has, and this time G&S don't mean a thing if ain't got that swing.

Doyle's adaptation sends Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore to sea in wartime 1944 on a tin boat decked out like the interior of a picture palace from cinema's golden age, ruffled curtain, Chinese lantern lighting and all, courtesy of Sarah-Jane McClelland's decorous design.

That compact set evokes both bandstand and boat but it looks lost at sea on the Theatre Royal stage, too small for the surroundings, the cast always on the horizon tantalisingly adrift from making contact. You sense this glossy production, transferred from The Watermill in Newbury, would better suit the round, whereas here it is icy and distant: never desirable in musicals, where emotions are heightened in song.

"Time for a little GI nostalgia," says GI Jack (Ben Tolley), seated at the piano as he introduces the Forties swing band that will travel on a voyage of love. American sailor Jack is in love with pert English beauty Jenny, the Wren (Gemma Page, clarinet), but her father, the ever correct Captain (Stephen Watts, trombone) would rather she married the new Commanding Officer, Joe Porter (Kieran Buckeridge, piano) with his aristocratic sang froid.

Doyle then stirs into his cocktail new lyrics, swing arrangements by Sarah Travis, plus a cheeky Cockney sailor, Jim (Steve Simmonds, double bass) and his answer to the Andrews Sisters, the Butterfly Sisters (saxophone-playing Kerry James, Nina Lucking and Claire Storey). Alas, they have more sax than sex appeal and typify the surprising lack of fizz in Doyle's staccato union of song, dance and clipped dialogue in which themes of patriotism bubble away beneath the chic surface.

The story bumps along the sea floor, as constrained as the cast on a linear stage on which the movement has a strange habit of moving away rather than towards the audience. The choreography, even for The Lindy Hop, fails to lift off. There are a few plus points - Buckeridge's arch approximation of Noel Coward, Page's Forties singing - but like Tiger Woods this season, the swing isn't working quite right.

Pinafore Swing, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 11:20 Wednesday, October 20, 2004