It's a BIG musical, probably one of the biggest, and in this expensive-looking revival - heading directly to the West End - it even has an impressive set of BIG screen projections, conjuring up everything from a fairground backdrop to a soaring journey above the ocean.

You will even believe a Waltzer car can fly, as it ascends heavenwards carrying the story's ghostly anti-hero to a long-overdue date with destiny!

So the only thing missing, on opening night, was the show's BIG name and Carousel's star turn, opera diva Lesley Garrett - "indisposed" but ably substituted by Kathryn Akin.

We may have missed the Garrett gusto on You'll Never Walk Alone, but it's a role that is subsidiary to the romantic leads, and in Alexandra Silber and Jeremiah James - the latter evidently enjoying time out of singing group Teatro - this show has a classy double act.

Both know full well how to serve up Carousel's inimitable collection of songs, plucking at the heartstrings like the harp-heavy orchestrations.

Indeed this production enjoys one of the best sets of voices heard for sometime and that is matched by many of the dance sequences.

The abstract ballet scenes that pretty well close the show, eventually, look like something of an anachronism nowadays and the producers have ducked the opportunity to maybe trim and tidy up the story.

In a show that takes nearly half an hour to get itself seriously started, and nearly as long to come up with a resolution, there's almost too much of a good thing in a three-hour epic.

Carousel turns until Saturday, November 15.

David Upton