THE man himself introduces this centenary celebration of the one form of Fats that no government could seek to repress.

His face is up there in lights, eyebrows hopping, eyes popping, his piano bopping on the large screen, as jazz pianist Thomas Wright 'Fats' Waller sings the saucy Ain't Misbehavin'.

You can see Fats' joint is jumpin' already on that old black and white film, but midweek Harrogate ain't the Cotton Club and so the joint needs jumpstartin'. Not easy.

Harrogate Theatre's artistic director, Hannah Chissick, has already chalked up one musical tribute success with the sophisticated delights of Side By Side By Sondheim upstairs in the dinky little Studio. Ain't Misbehavin', however, is a bigger show in every way, and not only has the company doubled, from five to ten, but so has the number of directors, with Chissick being joined by Nick Winston. Yet size isn't everything, and most important of all in a musical show like this is rapport, a two-way street that money can't buy.

Side By Side By Sondheim had a narrator to do the spadework and the cramped conditions lent the show a welcome intimacy too. Ain't Misbehavin' is subtitled The Fats Waller Musical Show, and not the Fats Waller life story. So the show has a simple construction: no dialogue, but a very high Fats content of wonderful songs of swing, ragtime, rhythm and hot and cool jazz, performed by five black singers of West End pedigree and a five-piece band in white shirts, dark waistcoats and hats to replicate the look of Fats Waller and His Rhythm.

The band, led by Jane Marlow from the Sondheim show, is kept behind a gauze screen of Waller portraits and cityscapes for too much of the first half. The singers, meanwhile, have been given a three-tier playground by designer Phil Witcomb, who evokes the Harlem of tenement blocks with his gangways, steps and staircases.

The show melts Waller solos, duets and close harmony pieces together, and if the first half tends to glide by on a surfeit of exuberant dance, the second half is pure joy, a better union of theatre and song from the moment the band moves forward to muscle in on the action. The singers too re-emerge from the boxes and stalls to impose themselves, and suddenly the audience starts feeling less haughty, more naughty.

In the absence of patter, the songs require individual characterisation from the company, and the check-suited peacock Simon Bishop, ladies' man Ray Shell, seen-it-all-before Wendy Mae Brown, soulful Amanda Posener and dazzling, slinky Emma Jay Thomas all bring their own magic to the joint, the more the show progresses into being the full Fats.

Box office: 01423 502116.

Updated: 09:41 Friday, February 20, 2004