The best part of Fame is when the taxi drives on. The headlights flare out of the darkness and the vehicle appears with Carmen standing on top singing ‘Fame'. The rest of the cast dance round the taxi and Tyrone even does a back flip off the bonnet. The audience are out of their seats and dancing…but by this point Tyrone has failed to graduate due to his illiteracy and Carmen is dead of a drug overdose. In fact, the show is over; this is just the reprise.

Closing on such a high note may seem the perfect way to end a show, but it also serves to distract from the fact that much of what came before is a lot less memorable. As energetic as the production is, it is never riveting.

The opening scene is very impressive and features a transparent screen, onto which are projected images of New York . Through the screen the students are visible, auditioning for the school behind the images.

Once they have been accepted the students spend their four years at the school dancing, singing and acting, but mostly dancing. The stage is basically a dance floor with a balcony above, and a set of spiral stairs on each side. For most of the numbers a giant mirror is suspended behind the dancers, which makes the space seem at once a lot bigger and a lot more compressed. But while the dancing is impressive, it isn't impressive enough to carry the show.

The plot is thin and feels crammed in between the dance numbers. Never has so little happened in four years. With such an emphasis on the dancing, there is scant time given over to character development. The students never seem fully rounded, and in fact come across as shallow, one dimensional and stereotypical. There's Tyrone, the illiterate kid from the ghetto, Schlomo, (rich and Jewish), Nick, who dreams of being a ‘serious actor', Carmen, who dreams of stardom in LA, Jose, the sex-obsessed Puerto Rican, and Mabel, the fat girl who munches snacks in ballet class. The High School of Performing Arts may be for exceptional students, but are any of these characters normal people? It is also unfortunate that a few of the supporting cast are a little long in the tooth for high school students, and no amount of angelic perma-grinning and tying hair into bunches can make them believable.

Certain moments catch the attention, like the striking choreography when Tyrone sings ‘Dancin' on the Sidewalk', and the ardour with which the cast belt out ‘Bring on Tomorrow' in the final ensemble graduation scene. Too many of the remaining scenes however just don't seem to bring anything special to the production.

Fame was billed as ‘dance dynamite' but although the fuse was lit, there were no really big bangs.