- Years after playing Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre
Dame, Maureen is still hearing the bells, the bells … and
singing her way through an inter-racial molehill
-
- CHRISTINE
-
- Book by Pearl Buck. Lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. Music
by Sammy Fain
- Original Broadway cast: Maureen O'Hara, Morley Meredith,
Nancy Andrews, Janet Pavek, Phil Leeds, Jonathan Morris, Daniel
Keyes. Musical director: Jay Blackton
- Songs: Welcome song; My Indian family; A doctor's soliloquy;
UNICEF song; My little lost girl; I'm just a little sparrow;
How to pick a man a wife; The lovely girls of Akbarabad; Room
in my heart; The Divali festival; I never meant to fall in love;
Freedom can be a most uncomfortable thing; Ireland was never
like this; He loves her; Christine; I love him; The woman I was
before
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- When the Irish Lady Christine FitzSimons (Maureen O'Hara)
goes East to meet her widowed son-in-law, the doctor Rashil Singh
(Morley Meredith), she falls in love with him. Their feelings
for each other are powerful, but not enough to solve the problems
thrown up by their different cultures and a native woman, and
as the show ends the sensible Lady FitzSimons returns to Ireland
alone. In the collision of its two worlds, its predominant horde
of children, and its developing but ultimately fruitless love
story, audiences may have been reminded of The King And I of
nine years before, but lyrically, dramatically and musically
Christine didn't hold a candle to Anna's romance with the King
of Siam. Here and there are distinct echoes of Fain's more fondly
recalled score for the magical puppet-musical Flahooley, but
despite some magnificent orchestrations from the expert pen of
Philip J Lang, this score fizzles away, trailing into the wings
a sadly tattered thing at the end of the disc. The lovely Miss
O'Hara, bereft of Charles Laughton's Hunchback but still going
on and on in one of her numbers about 'the bells', is here making
her debut in musical theatre. She brings her most graceful, not
to say gracious, manner to the title role but reveals a rather
reedy singing voice (even though the writer of the original sleeve
notes insists that her voice is 'vibrant') and a top note that
must have had audiences gripping their seats with anxiety. Paul
Francis Webster's lyrics sometimes border on the laughable, and
unfortunately whenever Miss O'Hara strikes up a song Mr Webster
comes up with his worst efforts. Things get particularly desperate
when she is called upon to deliver a song called 'Ireland was
never like this' (you're right there, Miss O'Hara!). Fain's music
is undemanding and rather obvious, although the lover of floperetta
will come to have an affectionate regard for it. 'My little lost
girl' is a simple, touching thing, and the ensemble numbers frequently
wake things up, as does Nancy Andrews, who gets a bit of grit
into it. Morley Meredith, delivering a performance of dramatic
ardour, has to sing 'Love has planted a seed that soon will bloom
into a flower', as he approaches a trembling, full-voiced climax.
He can have finished the evening nothing more than a husk. Webster
injects his male lead's role with some ho-hum-sounding philosophies,
and turns to cloying sweetness whenever the 'beauteous' (those
damned sleeve notes again!) heroine looms into view. There are
moments when things seem to be improving, notably in some of
the childrens' items (let's all sing the UNICEF song!) and in
Meredith's fine delivery of the 'Doctor's soliloquy' in which
Webster and Fain rise momentarily to the theatrical bait at Rashil's
desperate cry that 'All life is beauty born of pain.' It was
a message that Broadway audiences didn't seem bothered with.
Christine was dismissed after only 12 performances after its
opening of April 1960. It's not unlovable, but it does come over
as pretty bogus, and I think you will have to want to hear Miss
O'Hara sing very badly (if you get my meaning). DRG haven't bothered
much with this reissue, for there is no incisive present-day
comment, only the original, blithely uncritical sleeve notes
as printed with the LP. According to this, Christine is 'eagerly
awaited'…
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