Blues In The Night, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 24

GERALDINE Connor likes to splash out on a rainbow of colours in her productions.

However, when her latest West Yorkshire Playhouse show has the title of Blues In The Night, even she has to cut back on her palette.

"I'm being more conservative this time," she promises. "I have to be! It can't always be the same, but it is another show with great music and all my musical skills are being brought to the fore."

Indeed so. After her magnificently over-the-top community musicals, Carnival Messiah in 1999 and 2002 and Yaa Asantewaa - Warrior Queen in 2001, she is concentrating on all shades of blues in her revival of Sheldon Epps's Broadway and West End hit.

Blues In The Night is a compilation of 26 hot and sultry blues and jazz numbers, and with little spoken text in the show, the interweaving stories are defined by the music of Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arden, Alberta Hunter and Ida Cox.

The setting is a seedy Chicago hotel, where the worldly-wise Woman Of The World (played by Melanie Le Barrie) belts out wistful, tender tales of the lying, cheating snake of a man who has done her wrong.

From their separate rooms, two other women join her in song: The Girl With A Date (Donna Odain, from Leeds) is just starting out in the world; the Lady From The Road (Hope Augustus) is living in the thick of it.

It turns out that they have all had the same sweet, sexy, sorrowful experiences, and all with the same rake, The Man In The Saloon (Ray Shell).

Geraldine's production will be "completely different" to past versions, she says. "I thought it was boring and hackneyed just to do it as a series of songs being sung in a rundown hotel. So although there'll be no additional script, you'll see the story emerging through the lyrics sung by these three women.

"The women are hostesses - and we all know another word for hostesses is prostitutes - and what we've done is take their story and the musical out of the Thirties and set it in any time because the scenarios happened then, they happen now and they'll probably happen in the future."

Geraldine is deeply into the blues herself.

"The blues is part and parcel of black life, and in terms of the influence it's had on all music, it's a big thing," she says. "The blues cut at your heart; they're salty and they're real, and if you try to make them nice you're not dealing with reality.

"The blues can be very sad, but they can be fun too and when they are, they're positively pornographic. But the blues must not be confused with jazz, which has many genres, but blues was the forerunner."

The over-riding mood of Blues In The Night is one of reflection, in keeping with this time of the year.

"The show is tugging at the heart strings, because these three women are looking at themselves and being introspective, searching for where they went wrong or contemplating the choices they have now, while the Man In The Saloon is looking at the choices he's made and is not proud of them," says Geraldine.

On the surface, this musical seems a downbeat choice for a Christmas show, but then again: "I still don't know if I'm going to put a Christmas tree on the stage because Christmas is traditionally the grimmest, bluest time of the year, isn't it" says Geraldine, chuckling loudly at the thought.

Blues In The Night, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 24. Box office: 0113 213 7700.

Updated: 15:35 Thursday, December 18, 2003