- Ace of Clubs
Book music and lyrics by Noel Coward
Original London cast: Pat Kirkwood, Graham Payn, Sylvia Cecil,
Peter Tuddenham, Colin Kemball, Norman Warwick. md Mantovani
Nothing Can Last Forever; I'd Never Know; Something About A Sailor;
My Kind Of Man; This Could Be True; Josephine; Sail Away; Why
Does Love Get In The Way?; In A Boat On The Lake With My Darling;
Chase Me Charlie; Evening In Summer; I Like America
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- Coward's reputation in Britain was at a low ebb when Ace
of Clubs opened at the Cambridge Theatre in July 1950. Fulfilling
all expectations, despite a pre-London tour that had an ecstatic
reception, the show was coolly received (not for the first time,
Coward was booed at the first night) and flopped after 211 performances.
Originally to have been about a soldier returning from the war,
Coward's much revised libretto wound up around a Soho night-club,
where the singer Pinkie LeRoy (Patricia Kirkwood) falls in love
with a holidaying sailor, Harry Hornby (Graham Payn). They get
mixed up with a group of crooks and a missing necklace, in a
plot that also embraced the lovelorn club owner (Sylvia Cecil):
it might have been the plot of a British "B" picture.
The usually charitable editor of Theatre World, Frances Stephens,
found it 'very much dated, and the really bright spots few and
far between'. Top of her list was the amusing trio for 'Three
Juvenile Delinquents' with its contemporary swipe at teddy-boys
to which the audience rose but 'it was not enough to infuse the
piece with the speed and variety which seem inseparable from
the current fashion in musicals'.
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- It may have been Coward's first attempt at a musical comedy
proper, but it did not eschew many revue-like numbers (easily
introduced into Pinkie's night-club appearances) such as the
wordy, historical 'Josephine' and the feline adventures in 'Chase
Me, Charlie' - a truly happy moment of the show. This, and much
else of the score, was recorded in a highly attractive set of
medleys set down on 78s enhanced by the orchestrations of Mantovani.
Kirkwood acquits herself well in everything, even if she later
claimed she had thought little of Coward's score when first she
heard it. Payn, once again forced into a leading role by Coward,
isn't too convincing as a virile sailor. He gets to sing not
only the jerky 'I Like America' but the haunting 'Sail Away',
a number rescued from the show many years later to provide a
title song for another Coward score. Cecil, playing, according
to Kirkwood, 'a tough sleazy night-club owner past her best'
(hardly a role for which Miss Cecil would have confessed herself
suitable) is arbitrarily brought in to bring an operatic tone
to the low-life that surrounded her, but her material is good:
'Evening In Summer', a sad reflection of a dying light, and 'Nothing
Can Last Forever', a sweeping aria whose sentiment is a distinct
reminder of the waltz song 'This Is A Changing World' that she
sang in Coward's Pacific 1860. Divorced from its stage production
(and how out of touch with Soho's spivs and loose ladies the
author must have been) we may appreciate the many pleasures this
brief reminder of what Ace of Clubs (only four sides of
78s) offers.
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