WHEN David Kirk chose to take the rarely performed tale of the love between Hollywood silent film director Mack Sennett and his leading lady Mabel Normand he picked a winner.

This Jerry Herman and Michael Stewart show is packed with show stopping tunes, wonderful dialogue and a heart-breakingly poignant tale which ultimately ends in sadness.

For a fairly young cast to pull of something like this is quite an achievement, but pull it off they did, and in some style.

From the opening of Movies were Movies Simon Monte, in the role of Sennett, grabbed the audience's attention and held it throughout.

His deep and expressive voice belies his relative youth and he's not a bad actor either.

He was most effective in the scenes with Mabel (Sarah Earnshaw), either shouting at her or urging her to new artistic heights as the cast played out the early days of Hollywood's silent movies.

She ran him close for the money as the dizzy, delightful comedic Normand. Her singing voice is fantastic, as good as many I've heard on the professional stage and I'm sure a long career is ahead of this London Academy of Music and Drama gold medal winner.

There was superb support from Amy Horton as Lottie Ames, Simon Shorten as Fatty Arbuckle and Andrew North as Frank (Capra).

A particular highlight of this altogether delightful production was Monte's I Won't Send Roses and Earnshaw's Mabel's Roses, which echoes the first number.

The set was simple and highly effective.

A wire construction at the rear provided both somewhere to hang things and a doorway beyond which people could storm and stomp as the temper tantrums of those early movie days were brought vividly to life.

The costumes (by Cheri Sharpe's Dress Circle) expressed the period beautifully as the show moved from 1911 right through to 1932 and the birth of the talkies.

Told in flashback, it isn't difficult to follow although sometimes the sound seemed to pitch high and low depending on where the actors were standing.

The orchestra, under the direction of Judith Idle, never hit a wrong note and there was some nice chorus dancing, choreographed by Jacqui Drake.

Once more David Kirk has pulled off a triumph, as I'm sure the highly appreciative audience will agree.

The next Barnstormers production is Barnham in June 2001.