Sweet Charity, Crucible, Sheffield<br></br>Engaged, Orange Tree, Richmond<br></br>Eastward Ho!, Gielgud, London

Big spenders, big sound... big deal

Everyone knows the hit songs from Sweet Charity. The best numbers are like old flames: familiar and fun or dangerously seductive. The raunchy jazz of "Big Spender" certainly gets this 1966 New York musical rolling, thanks to Cy Coleman and his lyricist Dorothy Fields. Moreover, in Tim Sheader's Crucible production, Charity and her fellow "hostesses" sing that brassy come-on with notable flashes of anger, down in their pimping boss's night-club. They're obliged (as choreographed by Karen Bruce) to dirty-dance round poles to earn a buck. But instead of just thrusting erotically to the beat, they snarl, with a hint of imminent women's lib about them.

Unfortunately, that's the only sharp moment in this show. Sweet Charity captures the mores of its time (and ours) to a degree, picturing young working women caught between casual promiscuity and more old-fashioned dreams of romance and marriage. However, Neil Simon's book hardly merits a revival. Feigning to be gritty and satirical, it's essentially saccharine (unlike the hooker musical, Chicago) and only feebly comical, populated as it is by shallow caricatures.

Simon was brought in to tighten up (as well as Americanise) the storyline which is based on Fellini's movie, Nights of Cabiria. Yet whenever she's off-duty, Charity just tiresomely skips from one vignette to the next, seeking an ideal guy in typical Sixties' joints which, in this retro staging, look neither authentic nor fantastical. In Central Park, she demonstrates that – in spite of the job – she's a naive cutie-pie who bounces back after being given the push by a low-down dirty rat. Next, she briefly mingles with cocktail-sipping glitterati because she's bumped into an uptown movie star called Vittorio. Cue "If My Friends Could See Me Now" and some swinging from his chandelier.

Coming back down to earth she enrols for an evening class, then gets stuck in the elevator with a ridiculously nervous but supposedly adorable geek. For their first date, they pop into a swinging hippy church, seemingly just so everyone can chorus "The Rhythm Of Life". And so on.

Mark Inscoe's Vittorio is appealingly mellow and I should add that the punters around me appeared to enjoy the snazzy dancing and Anna-Jane Casey's chirpy act as Charity. Casey is irresistibly comical when relegated to Vittorio's wardrobe, peeping out and blithely munching on a sandwich. Generally, though, she struck me as technically slick with irritatingly showy charisma, no emotional sincerity or character development. Meanwhile, Robert Jones's set – with its huge metal fire-escape – looks artistically drab when, presumably, it's meant to be both grimly urban and a symbol of hope – the equivalent of Charity's aspirational song, "There's Got To Be Better Than This". You said it.

At Richmond's tiny theatre-in-the-round, Engaged is a far more hilarious and satirically barbed Victorian farce where grand passions multiply absurdly and marriages come down to money-grabbing. This forgotten gem by WS Gilbert (penned without Sullivan in 1877) sends up the era's windy sentimental dramas and exposes that society's base avarice with a humour that's damning and ebullient as well as remarkably fresh.

In the garden of a wee cottage near Gretna, Angus is a brawny but ludicrously tender rustic, given to blubbing over his beloved Meg and any whiff of human suffering. But then he derails the train from London. This does wonders for the rural economy, as the surviving tourists crave bed and board. These English aristocrats and rich, social-climbing tradesfolk are just as mean and even more fickle. Mr Cheviot Hill – heir to a vast fortune – is penny-pinching, though profligate with his affections whenever he glimpses a petticoat. Meanwhile, our young heroines declare they love various chaps with "imperishable ardour", only they need some definite idea about their "pecuniary positions". Canny manoeuvres and wide-eyed silliness meet very engagingly here, producing confusions of identity, endless disagreements about where the Scottish border is, and some splendidly convoluted plot-twists. Director Tim Carroll soft-pedals, barely bringing out the characters' grotesque traits, so it's hard to see how the original production could have been deemed so startling cynical. But the financial fiasco of the collapsing Royal Indestructible Bank certainly has bite post-Enron and, more generally, the hearty exuberance of Carroll's ensemble is delightful, including droll performances from the newcomers Caitlin Mottram and Claire Redcliffe.

There are a two or three relatively decent folk living on Goldsmith's Row in the 17th century London of Eastward Ho!, though the pursuit of money and prestige is soon embroiled with knavish tricks and marital shenanigans. This is one from the RSC's illuminating rep season of little-known Jacobean dramas that's been bravely brought to the West End. Co-authored by Ben Jonson, John Marston and George Chapman, Eastward Ho! is a minor but sometimes fascinating and lively comedy of manners. The virtuous goldsmith Touchstone has two apprentices. Golding is a good boy, marrying the old man's obedient daughter, Mildred, and becoming a deputy alderman. The other, Quicksilver, is a disobedient, ambitious lad who strikes dodgy deals with Sir Petronel Flash who's engaged to Mildred's title-craving sister, Gertrude. Flash and Quicksilver – nabbing a moneylender's wife en route – try to sail for Virginia, envisaging themselves lording it over the natives. Only they are ingloriously shipwrecked by the Isle of Dogs and slammed in jail.

The joint-authorship creates a play that, besides scrappy subplots, is in several minds about its moral tone. Pedantic and boisterous by turns, the dialogue only fitfully sparkles. But the themes this piece worries over – decadence, greed, colonialism and punishment vs mercy – overlap fascinatingly with other works, including The Tempest, Marston's The Malcontent (also in the season), Jonson's The Alchemist and Gay's The Beggar's Opera.

Under Lucy Pitman-Wallace's direction, there are some dull performances, badly sung ballads and crass modern gags – not least the deputy alderman's London Underground chain. One suspects the cast generally found it easier to get the audience involved when delivering their asides on the Swan's thrust stage in Stratford. However, the recreated old brick and timber set is winningly simple and the period costumes of soft velvets and embroidered silks (by Robert Jones) are gorgeous. Amanda Drew, as Gertrude, manages to be a peculiarly charming brat. Paul Bentall as the crabbed moneylender launches into a very funny imitation of Shylock-going-on-Richard III, while Geoffrey Freshwater's Touchstone rises to a moment of serious wrath. Patchy but enriching.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Sweet Charity': Crucible, Sheffield (0114 249 6000), to 25 Jan; 'Engaged': Orange Tree, Richmond (020 8940 3633), to Sat; 'Eastward Ho!': Gielgud, London W1 (0870 890 1105), in rep to 25 Jan