- The Crooked Mile - Part 3
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- EXTRACTS FROM CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS
- What Theatre World thought of The Crooked Mile
- A fury of discords by Peter Greenwell thrusts us into The
Crooked Mile of Soho, a new 'musical' in which rival gangs present
a pattern which threatens to become hackneyed. Many of Peter
Wildeblood's characters have likeable human traits and his lyrics
have point and there is humour in many of the situations. The
work owes something to Theatre Workshop's Soho collation Fings
Ain't Wot They Used T'be and something more to Lysistrata and
the borrowed parts are not very well integrated.
- People who saw Miss Millicent Martin's performance in Expresso
Bongo - a more satiric and a more melodious affair - will need
no urging to go and see her in The Crooked Mile, which allows
her more and bigger opportunities. Her performance as Cora, a
young hireling who collects gardening paraphernalia against retirement,
is really something. Mr Jack MacGowran, remembered for good work
in sterner stuff, appears unprofitably as a very gentle grafter
for whom crime has not paid. Among his gang of comic cuts, Mr
Edgar K. Bruce easily catches attention. The leader of the other
gang, a really nasty character, is propelled with deliberation
by Mr Elwyn Brook-Jones. Central to the plot is a sentimental
strand in which Miss Elisabeth Welch and Mr John Larsen sing
to admiration from time to time and Mr Alan Thomas makes an excellent
eleventh-hour addition.
- from the Evening Standard
- At last a British musical with lyrics bouncing with vivacity
and wit, with music bursting with the pulsating and mordant rhythms
of the 1950s, with a polish and a professionalism that puts paid
to the claim that the English are only capable of Salad Days
- the millenium has arrived.
- from the Stage:
- The Crooked Mile is a great stride forward for British musicals.
It was Expresso Bongo which first gave the hint that the British
musical was at last absorbing those issues which the better American
productions have been drumming into us for so long. Now an immense
stride forward has been made with The Crooked Mile at the Cambridge.
It has the pace, zest and vitality so lacking in the vast majority
of home grown pieces. To many, perhaps, this may be a retrograde
step. The British musical stage has normally been all sweetness
and light. Every character is either thoroughly 'nice' or wildly
farcical and there are no doubt those who think that The Crooked
Mile, peopled almost entirely with small-time crooks and prostitutes,
is aping the wrong aspects of the trans-Atlantic scene. But the
fact must be faced that, if we want all of those qualities which
go to make up an exciting musical, the seamy side of life provides
the best material. It is only necessary to mention West Side
Story, Guys and Dolls and Irma La Douce to get the point…
Peter Wildbelood has added … the customary streak of sentiment
- the sole survivor from the average British musical and the
thing that differentiates it most sharply from Expresso Bongo.
This is romanticised Soho. We all know that most of those who
work in this district go home every night to Putney or Ilford.
Mr Wildeblood would have us believe that the streets of Soho
are full of gangsters and street women with marshmallow centres.
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