Baz Bamigboye from the Daily Mail went behind the scenes of the Anything Goes rehearsals last week. Here’s what happened!

The shipboard musical Anything Goes had all hands on deck raring to set sail.

In the rehearsal room, Sutton Foster — cast as nightclub evangelist Reno Sweeney, the star of the show with its Cole Porter songs and wisecracks galore — slipped in to a pair of silvery-gold tap shoes.

Felicity Kendal — making her musical debut (at 74) playing hoity-toity society matron Evangeline Harcourt — buckled up her steel caps, too.

Robert Lindsay, as gangster Moonface Martin — aka Public Enemy No 13 — was doing some funny business in a scene with Carly Mercedes Dyer as his sassy sidekick Erma; something to do with emerging from a ship’s funnel with a violin case that was packing more than strings.

Kendal’s supposedly straight-laced Mrs Harcourt sipped cocktails with industrialist Elisha Whitney, played by Gary Wilmot.

Also on-board the fictional S.S American (actually it was marked out on the wooden floor of the rehearsal hall in Hampstead, NW London) were other love-struck characters: Billy Crocke, Hope Harcourt and Lord Evelyn Oakleigh; played by Samuel Edwards, Nicole-Lily Baisden and Haydn Oakley, respectively.

Reno (Foster) was on her feet flanked by her sinners — though for the sake of respectability during the voyage they’ve become angels — Purity, Charity, Chastity and Virtue, played by Selina Hamilton, Alexandra Wright, Charlene Ford and Frances Dee. Overseeing every song, gag and wiggle of the hips was director Kathleen Marshall who won the Tony for her choreography of the show she directed a decade ago — with Foster in the Reno role back then, too.

Anything Goes will open from 23 July at London’s Barbican Theatre for a strictly limited 12 week season until 17 October.

Photos: Joanne Davidson