Stephen Sondheim's music isn't everyone's cup of tea. Neither is it easy to perform.

But Rugby Theatre is this week staging an impressive version of Side By Side By Sondheim, which is a melange of some of his greatest compositions.

Just five people hold this show together, and as is always the case with such a small cast, they work hard from beginning to end.

Director John Smith has undertaken a tremendous challenge with this production, but the talents and energies of the cast make it work with remarkable style.

The songs - all 30 of them - are sung by Rayner Wilson, Michael Barker and Emma Varney.

They are accompanied by the faultless Mervyn Bethell on grand piano and the whole show is linked by Neil Morgan as the narrator.

The songs vary in style, but all bear the unmistakable Sondheim stamp and the lyrics are clever in the extreme.

Sondheim's favourite subjects are reckoned to be relationships and New York, which is borne out in the content of many of his songs.

Of the items featured in the show, my favourites are the more comic ones, and particularly those performed together by the three vocalists.

Can That Boy Foxtrot is hilarious through what it doesn't say, but suggests. It was written for Follies, but was suprisingly dropped.

Similarly impressive is You Could Drive a Person Crazy, from the show Company. It is sung a la Andrews Sisters, with appropriate choreography. A fantastic finale to the first half of the show.

Unless you're a Sondheim buff, the only item you're likely to recoognise is Send In The Clowns, from A Little Night Music. This, of course, was a chart hit in the Seventies.

But there is so much more to this amazingly talented composer.

Do go along to the show, which runs until Saturday. It's an education and once again demonstrates what a talented company we have on our doorstep.