The only thing that Shall We Dance lacks is the question mark in its title – and any trace of a coherent reason for its activities, which are many, varied in an unvarying way, and a Klondike of the obvious. The excuse is the music of Richard Rodgers, which has persuaded Adam Cooper that he should nail a narrative on its melodious ways, and set the thing dancing.

Cooper appears as a man in pursuit, we may suppose, of an ideal love, this quest taking him, such being the nature of theatrical tourism, Round The World. It would need a more inventive dance-maker than Cooper, and a vastly more sophisticated realisation of Rodgers’ scores, to bring this elderly plot to success. What we hear at the Wells is a “best of Rodgers” assortment, in over-amplified arrangements of immense un-charm. What we see is a troupe of dancers working their hearts out to suggest that they are Siamese or Russian, waltzing their legs off as exponents of Alt Wien-ery, being boisterously home-spun as Oklahokum folk, and, finally, deeply unoriginal denizens of Tenth Avenue, where the music is slaughtered together with various performers.

Cooper is an artist of fine dramatic gifts, but here, as choreographer, he needs a producer, and as producer here he needs help. (And, as a dancer, though unsparingly active, he needs a credible role.) I found Shall We Dance lacking in theatrical focus and shackled to one of the finest selections of theatrical clichés in captivity. There is a revolving stage, used with too little imagination. There are video projections, clever designs by Paul Farnsworth, and the band plays determinedly on.

Meantime, Cooper is whisked from foreign part to foreign part, is crammed (I swear) into a barrel, surrounded the while by an ensemble busting several guts as denizens of those locations that may be suggested by Rodgers’ music. Our Hero meets and parts from various loves, among them Emma Samms and Sarah Wildor (who deserves better than Tenth Avenue as a place in which to display her piercing dramatic gifts). And as the plot wends its leaden way, the dancing keeps rushing at us with teeth-gritted determination. To no avail. The duck is dead. ★★☆☆☆