On the Town, Coliseum, London <br/> Midwinter, Soho Theatre, London <br/> Rhinoceros, Lyric Hammersmith, London

A few sharp intakes of breath were heard on St Martin's Lane last week as the English National Opera added the Broadway musical, On the Town, to their repertoire. Some highbrow die-hards are, naturally, shocked. But watching Leonard Bernstein's 1944 rom-com, what's more immediately startling is the innocence of his US Navy boys as they leap ashore in New York with 24 hours leave. These days, after Abu Ghraib, we have an extremely cynical view of how the American military spend their spare time. By contrast, Jude Kelly's production does their image the power of good. Here come Gabey, Chip and Ozzie (Aaron Lazar, Adam Garcia and Tim Howar), all in old-fashioned white sailor suits, chorusing "It's a helluva town" and racing off to befriend some dames. Essentially, Chip and Ozzie's fun and games with Caroline O'Connor's Hildy and Lucy Schaufer's Claire constitute a frisky, pre-1960's celebration of sexual liberation.

A few sharp intakes of breath were heard on St Martin's Lane last week as the English National Opera added the Broadway musical, On the Town, to their repertoire. Some highbrow die-hards are, naturally, shocked. But watching Leonard Bernstein's 1944 rom-com, what's more immediately startling is the innocence of his US Navy boys as they leap ashore in New York with 24 hours leave. These days, after Abu Ghraib, we have an extremely cynical view of how the American military spend their spare time. By contrast, Jude Kelly's production does their image the power of good. Here come Gabey, Chip and Ozzie (Aaron Lazar, Adam Garcia and Tim Howar), all in old-fashioned white sailor suits, chorusing "It's a helluva town" and racing off to befriend some dames. Essentially, Chip and Ozzie's fun and games with Caroline O'Connor's Hildy and Lucy Schaufer's Claire constitute a frisky, pre-1960's celebration of sexual liberation.

Kelly also juxtaposes the terrors of war with the guys' pursuit of love, suggesting it's action and reaction. Thus, her staging starts off plunged in gloom. Screeching shellfire is heard while, in a sea of darkness, one makes out a miniature grey battleship charting its course along a thin blood-red line, and Gabey's crew standing in a tableau like a monument to the fallen. After this, the comedy takes too long to spark - not helped by designer Robert Jones's Manhattan being permanently engulfed in night. Lurid splashes of colour do creep in and harbour crates are jokily recycled as fairground stalls, but a handful of girders against black backcloths feels miserably skeletal, and Kelly's rather bland male trio lack the instant charisma of Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin in the film version.

Vocally too, the performers drawn from the theatre are, all too obviously, no match for the opera singers - Lucy Schaufer, Willard White and Andrew Shore - with whom they are sharing the stage. Aaron Lazar was particularly feeble at the preview I attended, almost drowned out by the orchestra (conducted by Simon Lee). In fact, it sounded suspiciously as if an amplifier was switched on during one of his solos, which roused exclamations from the audience.

He has one charmingly shy scene at the music school with his sweetheart, Helen Anker's lissome Ivy. Nevertheless, her boozy singing coach (Sylvia Syms) could surely teach him a thing or two as she tetchily cries, "The resonators! The resonators!" That said, this show really takes off when the go-getting ladies get going, and the score is strewn with wonderful numbers which aren't in the movie. Caroline O'Connor is having a blast, beetling around at high speed like a crazily determined wind-up toy. She really brings out the screwball wit of Betty Comden and Adolph Green's book and lyrics. Meanwhile, Willard White's richly reverberative, bluesy rendition of the docker's aubade is spellbinding, and Schaufer's "We'll catch up some other time" is as hauntingly poignant as Vera Lynn singing "The White Cliffs of Dover".

By the end, I was delighted to have seen this crowd-pulling revival, the first in London in 40 years. I did miss Gene Kelly's zingy tap routines and found the long balletic fantasias, choreographed by Stephen Mear, rather a drag. They hold up the action, and all the romantic gesticulations of yearning, clutching at thin air, look rather silly in the broader comic context. However, they are in the spirit of Jerome Robbins' original sequences and Mear's jazzier, swirling crowd scenes are slick. Seeing On the Town at the ENO also makes one far more appreciative of Bernstein's great category-defying blend of popular and classical harmonies and, indeed, to the teasing, mock-operatic elements in this score.

In Zinnie Harris's new RSC play, Midwinter, Ruth Gemmell's Maud is a ragged survivor in a rubble-strewn unnamed land. She hears that her people's decade-long war is over just after she has struck a harsh bargain with a pleading old man, John Normington's Leonard. He has agreed that, if she gives his starving grandson some scavenged horsemeat, she can keep the boy as her own. Pal Aron's Grenville - her lover who was presumed killed in combat - then returns so that, in theory, Maud's family unit is restored. However, in a web of confused identities, an increasingly vicious battle is fought over the child.

At points this chamber work, directed by Harris, is too relentlessly po-faced and monotonous in its staccato exchanges. However, it also has a stark power and the archetypal strength of a folkloric legend, with echoes of Brecht, Medea and Martin Guerre. Gemmell and Aron also oscillate sharply between vulnerability and cruel violence, and Midwinter forms part of a striking new wave of apocalyptic war plays.

Finally, Ionesco's 1959 absurdist drama, Rhinoceros, is partly an allegory about the rise of fascism, as the citizens of a quiet town turn surreally into pachyderms and rampage in herds through the streets. Kabosh's physical theatre production becomes increasingly dark and claustrophobic. It is also, enticingly, performed in a tiny shack where the audience perch on higgledy-piggledy stools. The four-strong cast play multiple roles and spryly narrate the stage directions, pointing at a titchy model of Ionesco's market square. The trouble is, their initial clowning is too big for the space, with excessive shouting and repetitive face-pulling. The humour is obviously meant to draw you in, but, in practice, it seems so childish that you distance yourself. So, all in all, very much hit and miss.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'On the Town': Coliseum, London WC2 (020 7632 8300), to 24 May; 'Midwinter': Soho Theatre, London W1 (0870 429 6883), to Friday; 'Rhinoceros': Lyric Hammersmith, London W6 (08700 500511), to 23 March