Cole Porter can’t have known that he was collaborating with Warner Brown on this “musical mystery”, having been dead for 44 years before its premiere. But I don’t think he would have objected to having his lesser-known songs injected into the British dramatist’s tale of the novelist who is murdered at a Manhattan ball. An easygoing fellow, he might even have been pleased to have helped to relaunch London’s original pub theatre.

The uncomfy little seats have become comfy raked benches, the tiny stage is wider, but the feeling remains amiably informal for what is a thoroughly diverting entertainment. Imagine a collaboration between Porter and Raymond Chandler, and here it embryonically is. I say embryonically, because Brown’s book hasn’t the bite and wit of the best American thrillers circa 1945, when the musical is set, nor does it spoof the genre, as The 39 Steps triumphantly does at the Criterion. Also, the story has a sporadic feel. One moment Chris Ellis-Stanton is Johnny Johnson, a raw boy from Montana taken up by a wealthy publisher, Katherine Kingsley’s Suzanne. The next he has been reinvented as the hugely successful writer Jay St John. The next he has married Suzanne, while secretly and improbably collaborating on a novel with a drag queen called Ron, and the next he is dead.

But why expect smooth narrative or psychological flow from a 100-minute musical? Porter’s numbers are more seamlessly cut into the plot than Abba’s songs are into Mamma Mia!. There are exceptions, most of them involving Suzanne’s daughter Leah. It made me uneasy when Jay directed love-songs (“you’ve got that thing that makes birds forget to sing”) at the little girl. But there are also sophisticated successes, among them For No Rhyme or Reason and I’m Throwing a Ball Tonight, which suit the musical’s world of nightclubs and smart parties.

Matthew White’s production is a prolonged flashback, remembered by an adult Leah who wants to uncover the truth of her stepfather’s death. There’s not much tension in the story or surprise in its solution, but any disappointment is offset by stylish performances from Kingsley, Ellis-Stanton and, especially, Mark McGee as a drag-queen who combines human slyness with musical energy. And at least the King’s Head is reborn. That’s good news for us all.

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