IT’S VERY RARE in this industry, in this country, that audiences are privileged to see skills so sharp and lithe, so wise and developed, in a performer who is so young. Daniel Anderson, at just 24, embraces performance with a full heart and an open soul, but much tightly honed talent. His presence in Mad about the Boys: A Marvellous Party with the Best of Porter, Coward and Novello, at Theatre on the Square in Sandton until 23 March is simply impeccable.

Structured along similar lines to other works under the WêlaKapela Production house, such as Vincent and The Story of Eva Cassidy, Mad About the Boys is a revue with a singer and piano. It’s a piece which tells a history with songs and context. Like those shows, the work never allows itself to slide into cliché, because of the freshness of the performance, rather than the material. With a stage set that says as much about the home fires of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s as the anthology of unforgettable songs performed, the work is as much a chunk of modernist history as it is a revue of lovely music.

From Noël Coward’s I went to a marvellous party to Cole Porter’s Ev’ry time we say goodbye, the songs, written in the energised years between the Wars, have developed their own immortality. And the work of Ivor Novello, as much a swell as Porter and Coward, is celebrated here with equal aplomb, even though he has been lost to popular awareness.

Down to the tremolo vibrato in his voice, and the nifty bits of choreography, the martini and the cigarette, Anderson honours all three of these icons of popular music of the era with empathy, detail and love. The crowning glory of his show is arguably his rendition of Coward’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen. The thrill of Anderson’s interpretation of this deliciously politically incorrect piece lies with his ability, like the extraordinary Danny Kaye, who recorded the song in 1949, to make it his own, with his outstanding verbal dexterity in terms of rapid fire lyrics and scat, handled with mind-boggling clarity.

However, this is no sunshine and roses portrayal of three iconic men. Along the lines of burlesque revues of the ilk of Gross Indecency, on the boards at PopArts in 2014, Mad About the Boys is an anthem to an era of terror experienced by homosexual people. It is written niftily around the values of the so-called Lavender Scare in which men and women in US government jobs, suspect of being homosexual were persecuted. This made the realities surrounding gender complex, forcing many individuals to elect to ‘pass’ as straight and live lies rather than suffer infamy, humiliation, scandal and damage at the hands of the powers that were.

Anderson is a mash-up of Joel Grey’s Emcee in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, the wisdom and cynicism of an elderly Maggie Smith, all wrapped up behind a baby face that contorts with earnestness to the thread of each song he performs. He is already making enormous and beautiful forays into the international theatre arena. One of these days, he will likely be snapped up by the big stages of the western world and wow them all, with his energy, his triple threat talents and his love for his medium. And they may not want to let him go! See this show: It’s a shot in the arm that you won’t forget.

• Mad About the Boys is written directed by Amanda Bothma. Performed by Daniel Anderson accompanied by Paul Ferreira on piano, it is produced by Welakapela Productions and Daphne Kuhn and stage managed by Regina Dube assisted by Melidah Thakadu, with technical management by Loftus Mohale assisted by Reggie Mathebe and is onstage at Theatre on the Square in Sandton, until 23 March 2024.