Popkiss

Book and Lyrics: Michael Ashton, based on Ben Travers' play 'Rookery Nook'
Music: David Heneker and John Addison
Globe Theatre 1972

This musical had always fascinated me - such a wonderful cast, excellent writers and great source material - why did it flop?

Finding the script and the score proved no easy task. There was no script in either the British Library or the Theatre Museum and eventually I contacted Richard Cottrell the director of the original production, who kindly lent me his script - complete with scrappy bits of rewriting and large pencil crossings out. Although this was to prove enormously helpful, I knew that this was not the final version as played in the West End. After many phone calls and letters, we obtained another script from the stage manager of the original production (found in her loft) and another slightly different version from Michael Ashton's agent. Now I had the problem that none of them were totally correct, so had no alternative but to use all three, plus the original Rookery Nook play, to reconstruct a script from which we could work.

Meanwhile, tracking down the elusive score was like a treasure hunt! I knew that three pieces of music were published but I had found only one and I had one number on tape from radio broadcast, but the real score was lost - even the composers had nothing. A demonstration recording came to light, which although historically interesting (David Heneker himself playing and singing the songs), contained little of the final score and consisted mostly of 'cut' numbers due to the fact that it was recorded during the early drafts of the piece.

Sheet music cover of 'The Girl From Up The Road'

(Click on the sheet music to see it full-size)

Then, out of the blue, came a phone call from one of the stage management team of the original production who informed me that she had a 'live' recording, made during an actual performance of the show on the last leg of the pre-London tour at Brighton. At last I was able to hear the rest of the score and immediately knew we were on to a winner. Transcribing the whole score from this tape would have been an arduous task but seemed the only option at the time. However, John Addison's original score was suddenly discovered among many of his famous film score manuscripts in the Brigham Young University, Utah, USA. His score was still not complete and thus some transcribing from tape was necessary plus reworking of incidental music and writing of new dance music arrangements. Three songs which were taken out on the pre-West End tour were restored and three lesser pieces deleted.

Finally, I received a live recording and a script of the West End version. This dispelled any doubts I had about the decisions I had taken, and Michael Ashton reassured me that I was on the right track. So, after much agonising and laughter, and many late nights, the rediscovered Popkiss was once again on the stage - with excellent new orchestrations by Rowland Lee - 25 years to the week since the original London production.

And it worked like a dream! The audiences at the Electric Theatre, Guildford in 1997 loved it and we had comments such as: 'Why has this show been lost for so long?'

I asked myself: 'Why was it a flop first time around?' I think that the timing was wrong - at the end of the 1920's nostalgia boom of the early 1970's, too small a show to succeed in the West End at the time, Jesus Christ Superstar had just opened - how could little Popkiss hope to compete? But there had been other problems too: re-casting after the pre-show tour meant that numbers were cut, new settings were not built for the prologue (so it was cut), new orchestrations had to be written as the pre-West End set were awful, it got a mixed press, the performers realised the show was doomed… I could go on. But the story ends happily. The new Popkiss works and will soon be available for everyone to produce.

David Heneker spent the week with us and watched every performance. Following the production, I became his archivist and have had much joy organising all his scores, scripts, recordings, and other materials.

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