In 1938, The Boys From Syracuse opened with an announcement. The two huge masks of Tragedy and Comedy enter loftily. From underneath, two gleeful comics emerge: “If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for us!” They exit tapping and the show begins.

That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. When they put Rodgers and Hart on the cover of Time that year, the headline read: “If it’s good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for us!” It was on the show’s posters.

In 2002, The Boys From Syracuse are back, exhaustively overhauled from head to toe. And, just to let you know this isn’t your father’s Syracuse, the rewrites start from the word go. This time round, two chorines clad in Caesar’s Palace tunics enter and slough off the revised announcement: “If it was good enough for Shakespeare, it’s good enough for you.” They don’t dance off, they walk off, and the overture starts.

Given that everything has changed and nothing in this painstakingly over-revised revival is accidental, it’s worth pausing to consider that first small amendment, which manages to distill everything you need to know about the gulf between Boys ’38 and Boys ’02. The new version is tarter, bitchier, a put-down, and somehow a little less joyful. If that’s a lot to read into a monosyllable, so be it. But the first Boys was a big-hearted, rowdy explosion and the new Boysis cooler, detached, and strangely sour, and the