When Georgina Hopson sings Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, she lifts the roof and stops the show. It’s an exhilarating high point in a production that mostly struggles to find its rhythm.

Featuring music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Leo Robin and book by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields, the 1949 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was based on Loos’ 1925 novel and made a star of Carol Channing.

It was then famously turned into a 1953 film starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. The movie retained the best songs, including Bye Bye Baby, I’m Just a Little Girl From Little Rock and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend. But you can see why the less memorable songs were dropped and replaced with new ones, and why there were several changes to the plot line to bolster the narrative.

Georgina Hopson and Tomáš Kantor in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Hayes Theatre Co. Photo © John McRae

The plot in the stage musical is wafer-thin, with several scenes that have no need to be there – the song I’m A’ Tingle, I’m A’ Glow by the vegetable-mad Josephus Cage, for example.

Set in...