BEFORE the brave audience who attended the Palace Theatre on Tuesday watched a light-hearted show, the management introduced a minute’s silence for victims of the Manchester arena bomb.

Back in the 1920s when Thoroughly Modern Millie, the musical, is set, Joanne Clifton, who plays Millie Dillmount, is thoroughly modern.

She performs the Charleston with vigour wearing the shortest, most glittering dresses, longest beads and fashionable head bands turning heads as she does so.

Unfortunately, the theme is far from modern. It’s set in a time when a girl’s best route to riches is via a well off husband. Millie, from Kansas, is on a husband hunt in New York with eyes on her boss but life intervenes when she falls for another.

Strictly Come Dancing Star Clifton proves she can adapt not just to the stage but to playing a lead role with panache and a beautiful singing voice, too.

Director and choreographer, Racky Plews, would have had no problem in guiding this prodigious natural dancer through numbers such as the Argentine tango and, the tap item Forget about the Boy.

The musical is dappled with humour, much of it coming from Mrs Meers who runs the women-only hotel where Millie stays. The untrustworthy Chinese lady is played by a versatile Lucas Rush.

Graham MacDuff as Millie’s boss is exceptionally amusing when he gets inebriated after Millie’s friend, Dorothy Brown (Katherine Glover) goes missing.

All ends well when Dorothy’s poor heart throb, Jimmy Smith,(Sam Barrett) turns out to be better off than we think.

There isn’t much to the plot which, at times, seems ridiculous – especially the bit about the white slave trade – but the singing and dancing cannot be faulted and the costumes are out of this world.

Star rating: * * *