SHE Loves Me is to musicals as Are You Being Served? was to comedy/

soaps. Except that one remembers the ghastly theme tune of the latter,

whereas the music in the former is singular only in that it is instantly

forgotten. And each episode of Are You Being Served? had a story.

In She Loves Me there is no story. Just a situation whereby a sales

clerk in a comestic shop discovers that a sales girl he detested is in

fact the girl with whom he has a romantic but anonymous correspondence.

He woos her, her dislike of him changes to love, and true love will out

in the end.

Aw shucks. Apart from this fascinating pair of lovelorn scribblers

there are a further 33 characters of varying degrees of fatuous inanity

or petty unpleasantness.

It seems a pity that with a cast of 16, a decent little sextet in the

pit, and an ingenious set by Nigel Hook, Perth's new artistic director,

Andrew McKinnon, should have chosen such vapid material.

There were some good things in the production -- Alan Vicary brought a

chillingly sweet viciousness to the part of Steven Kodaly which almost

rescued the character from the banality of the script; there were three

jokes worth hearing; and the series of cameos describing the different

categories of Christmas shopper was cleverly conceived, well-timed, and

beautifully executed.

But the incessant use of spotlights to focus attention was irritating

and served only to emphasise the vacuity of what one was watching. She

Loves Me was written by the writer of Cabaret and became, we are told, a

cult musical. Someone must be being served. Not me.