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The Crooked Mile - Part 8
 
A view from the gods:
 
ICARUS looks down on The Crooked Mile
 
The Crooked Mile meant business, and - if its first night was anything to go by - it worked. Even the Overture received an ovation, understandable even today when one hears it. It promised something distinct, brave, pouring out with feeling. It sounded serious. It seemed like real music, with dramatic content and melodies that demanded to be heard. It also had fabulous orchestrations by Gordon Langford which took the score into a class of its own.
 
Beyond the Overture, all was perhaps not always well. Maybe Elisabeth Welch lacked guts and anything very powerful to do beyond her big aria 'If I Ever Fall In Love Again'. Maybe Jack MacGowran sounded as if he had to sing against his will. Maybe there were too many numbers that didn't make a strong enough impression on first hearing. But what was good was very good. There was MacGowran's stirring declaration of spirit in the soaring 'Free'; the gentle but ultimately blazing denunciation of mistaken love in Larsen's second act show-stopper (it should have been if it wasn't) 'Down To Earth'; and - still remembered today - a terrific duet for the leading ladies, 'Meet The Family'. There doesn't seem to be a false note in The Crooked Mile, and musically this is one of the most mature (one might say ONLY mature) British musicals of the period. Then why didn't the public take to it?
 
It used Soho, sugaring the pill of prostitution , pulling comedy from the business of selling sex on the streets - even though Cora tells the girls that a new law just about to come in will mean that they have to work indoors. It exults in types. This is Soho made up to be what it probably never was. It doesn't shy from sentimentality. Its hero, Jug Ears, is getting on and ineffectual and not physically attractive. Jug Ears is also on the wrong side of the law but he, like Cora the street-girl, has a heart of gold. In their way, these characters are children. But we have to scrape at the surface of The Crooked Mile to discover what it really is. Isn't it a story of middle-aged love (always difficult on stage) mixed up with a Gilbertian plot about misunderstandings about a child's age? There isn't even any love interest; only Elisabeth Welch foolishly thinking she is in love. There is a coolness beneath the sentimentality, but the coolness brings strength.
 
Soho as the land of Oz
 
What elevates The Crooked Mile is its positive philosophy, the belief that aspirations may be unreachable but that happiness can be got from simply staying put, with being satisfied with what you've got, being satisfied with where you are and who you're with. The land of Oz is in the back yard of Soho. This is what makes Wildeblood and Greenwell's greatest song of the score, 'Free', a deeply touching piece. Perhaps the message of the show is that it's all right to fail. It's unlike the message given out by Expresso Bongo, another of the British Soho musicals, whose reputation has outstripped that of The Crooked Mile. In Expresso Bongo, failure leads to sourness. In The Crooked Mile, not moving on becomes the only inevitability. Thus, when the chorus bellows the last lines
 
'Suddenly you feel you want to stay'
 
we are moved and uplifted by what they realise. These people will stay where they are. Soho is paradise. The effect that Wildeblood and Greenwell achieve is to give Soho mythological proportions. The power of The Crooked Mile is also dependent on the fact that this is a truly big piece of theatre, on a much bigger scale than any of its Soho musical cohorts. Greenwell's achievement alone is tremendous. For a moment, it seemed that there would now be no going back for the British musical, for Greenwell brought a new confidence, almost staggering in its quality. Could this be the same composer who had written little musicals, polite and diverting, for the Players Theatre? Could this be the man who had written Twenty Minutes South, the ultimate British musical about suburbia, doing for outer London what Bernstein and his librettists had done for New York in On The Town and Wonderful Town? Where Twenty Minutes South is pretty, The Crooked Mile is handsome; musical with muscle and a heart beating beneath it. Listen to the LP, well worth seeking out. Bungled as it sometimes sounds, it stands as a lasting tribute to a collaboration that must surely have had wonders ahead of it.
 
But it didn't. The next Wildeblood and Greenwell musical, House of Cards, didn't cause a ruffle. They abandoned another project. Wildeblood turned away from musical theatre. Greenwell carried on working, writing songs for a dreary musical biography, The Mitford Girls. They were pleasant enough (the songs, not the girls) but didn't hold a candle to the work he had done for The Crooked Mile. Passion had flown out of the window.
 
Dealing with differences
 
You can't blame the Players Theatre management for The Crooked Mile's failure. They threw everything they could at the show. The famous French director, Jean Meyer, was brought over from the Comedie Francaise to stage it. The casting was done with the utmost care. Reginald Woolley's designs looked real, and made no concessions. The orchestrations by Langford couldn't have been bettered. Welch and Martin had fabulous entrances. Welch was announced by Jug Ears' gang and made her way down some stairs onto the stage. Martin burst into Sweet Ginger's ironmongery establishment and shouted 'Shop!' - a sure-fire invitation to applause.
 
Wildeblood didn't bring issues to the fore, but faced them head on, without fussing. Cora speaks of money she's earned from 'that divorce-job in Brighton'. It is Sweet Ginger's dissatisfaction with Jug Ears, her devoted but dull dog of a not very satisfactory boyfriend, that tricks her into thinking a handsome American wants to whisk her off to America. One of Jug Ears' gang, brings her round in a scene that shows Wildeblood's skill.
 
Squeezy: You belong here, Sweet Ginger.
Sweet Ginger: I could have belonged there just as well, given half a chance.
Squeezy: Ah, but would they have given you half a chance? Them Yanks can be very funny, you know, about … well, foreigners. It's not like here, you know, where you either like a person or don't, and it don't matter tuppence about what colour they are.
(Sweet Ginger's hand goes up to her face.)
Say what you like about Soho, that's one good thing in its favour. (A pause) Sweet Ginger?
Sweet Ginger: I was just thinking. All the years Jug Ears and me have been together, he's never even mentioned it.
Squeezy: Bless your heart, I don't suppose he's even noticed.
 
It's Wildeblood's way of dealing with differences that makes this so appealing a work. He doesn't touch on homosexuality. Of course he doesn't. How could he have dealt with it in any real way in a musical play of the 1950s? But he lets us know that it's fine to be different, it's fine to be in love and not realise it until it's almost too late. It's fine to be crooked. Even - as Jug Ears concedes at the final curtain - half-crooked.

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