Bootleggers Billie Bendix and Cookie McGee have stashed 400 crates of hooch in the basement of Jimmy Winter’s Long Beach summer house. Well, he never goes there, does he, as Billie ascertained when she bumped into Jimmy by chance, had a lip-locking moment with the tipsy playboy and lifted his wallet.

Ashleigh Rubenach and Rob Mallett in Nice Work If You Can Get It, Hayes Theatre Co, 2022. Photo © Grant Leslie Photography

Jimmy turns up at the house the next morning, obviously, with his new, fourth, wife in tow – the marriage as yet unconsummated due to an annulment issue with wife number three. Cookie is mistaken for the newly appointed butler, leaving it possible for Billie to later assume the guise of a maid, unaccountably sporting a Cockney accent. A slip of the tongue identifies her as Bobbi Billie, who hails from – where could it be, with that accent but that name? – yes, the South! Of England.

The riotous mayhem of Nice Work If You Can Get It depends entirely on such inspirations of the moment on the part of its...