For ages the keynote of the summer season at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but that changed when Timothy Sheader took the helm. Sheader is a musicals man, who sees no reason why classic song-and-dance shows shouldn’t be performed under London summer skies. In the past decade or so he’s pretty much proved his case, and begins this season by commissioning Drew McOnie to direct and choreograph Leonard Bernstein’s 1944 breakthrough.

This tale of three naval ratings on 24 hours’ shore leave in New York City was written and set during World War Two, but McOnie removes any hint of the conflict. He stages it as a fantasia, with his company dressed largely in bright, solid colours and dance sequences grounded in the sense of “American ballet” which motivated Jerome Robbins’ original concept for the show but also including more modern gestural idioms. (Indeed, at one point he includes a gay pas de deux which would have been inconceivable in the Forties.)

It pays off beautifully. I’m not much of a fellow for dance, but McOnie’s exuberant work here is irresistible. He keeps matters constantly fluid on Peter McKintosh’s set of impressionist wharfside freight containers from which a host of other locations are trucked on and off. The central trio are engaging, but particular mention must be made of Jacob Maynard, who took over as the innocent Chip with mere days’ notice. (As naive as Maynard’s Chip is, so is Lizzy Connolly determinedly libidinous as his date Hildy.) Danny Mac’s Gabey and Siena Kelly’s Ivy are not the most magnetic of central couples, but Bernstein’s eclectic score and McOnie’s choreography overcome this minor weakness in Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s book.

Towards the end I noticed that the fantasy had, as it were, overflowed the stage: Howard Hudson’s lighting includes some discreet beams on the trees behind the stage, as if to remind us that the experience does not simply consist of the show, but of the location in which it’s presented. It all makes for a smart, brash, infectious production.

Written for the Financial Times.