THERE’S no doubt that 9-5 is certainly a feel-good musical, especially for anyone with a boss they fantasise about hog tying and locking up as far away from the office as possible for a month or so...

For last year’s production of Sister Act AAODS opted for a musical adaptation of a hugely popular film with an iconic central role and presumably figuring that you can’t have too much of a good thing the company chanced its luck on a winning streak by settling on the Dolly?Parton classic for this year.

That the popular appeal was increased by having not one but three iconic central characters could only be an advantage and the company was lucky in its choice of leading ladies - Cecilia Bawler, Kelsea Richardson and Lucy Richards - as their energy and chemistry carried the show.

As with any adaptation like this the main challenge for the actors is to decide whether they’re playing the character or the actress who originally created the character and 9-5 does little to ease this dilemma by topping and tailing the show with a message from a giant holographic Dolly, serving as an immediate reminder of the original.

That said all three - it’s almost impossible to separate them thanks to their tight performance - manage to find a compromise between mere imitation and artistic interpretation and bring life and humour to the production with some great moments like the Act I?fantasy scene and finale showing signs of the potential this show had.

As the ‘sexist, egotistical lying, hypocritical, bigot’ Franklin D Hart, AAODS?newcomer Matthew Bryant worked hard but didn’t quite pull it off and ended up not quite sleazy or threatening enough to fully convince, while Kerrigan Heffernan as Joe and Stephen Hopkins as Dwayne were decent enough in cameo roles...although it has to be said that when it comes to scene stealing Dwayne’s wig takes full honours. Somewhere out there there’s a Lego cowboy with a very cold head!

Other good support came from Lucy Draper as Roz and Brenda Maloney as Margaret.

As always AAODS?chorus worked well musically, although there were times when dramatically it seemed things were as new to them as to us and confusion set in.

There is strength in numbers, something that was illustrated only too well when the chorus split, with the women failing to really shine while backing a hardworking Lucy Draper in Heart to Hart and as for the men in One of the Boys....well, as Dolly herself puts it in the show’s finale, ‘if you can’t say anything nice, keep your big mouth shut’.

On the whole, this was a difficult show, with a lot of complex scene changes, which to her credit director Deborah Harrington tried to incorporate into the action. That it didn’t quite work is a shame.

9-5 is show with big character shoes to fill and again there were times when it didn’t quite work...when it did there were moments of huge enjoyment and it’s a given that everyone will leave the theatre singing the theme song, but for me sadly it was also a show which just needed that little bit more...more polish, more sass and more dare I say a bit more of that Dolly magic!

• 9-5 can be seen at the Borough Theatre until Saturday and tickets are available from the theatre box office on 01873 850805.