- a regal musical history (by American hands, but seen in
London) of Queen Victoria and her beloved German consort …
I AND ALBERT
 Book
by Jay Allen. Lyrics by Lee Adams
Music by Charles Strouse
Original London cast: Polly James, Sven-Bertil Taube, Lewis Fiander,
Aubrey Woods, Gay Soper. Musical director: Gareth Davies
SONGS: Vivat! Vivat Regina!; It Has All Begun; Leave It Alone;
I've 'Eard The Bloody 'Indoos 'As It Worse; This Gentle Land;
This Noble Land; I And Albert; Enough!; Victoria; All Glass?;
The Genius Of Man; The Victoria And Albert Waltz; His Royal Highness;
Just You And Me; Draw The Blinds; The Widow Of Windsor; No One
To Call Me Victoria; When You Speak With A Lady; Go It, Old Girl!
- Misguided, brave, extravagant and unmourned, this British
showing of an American work by the authors of Annie, won few
admirers when it premiered in November 1972 at the Piccadilly
Theatre. Everyone agreed that Polly James made a decent attempt
at portraying Queen Victoria from girlhood into advanced old
age, but the author's attempts to humanise her and string out
her life and reign through a long evening were not altogether
successful. The canvas is so vast that any organisation of its
content was bound to bring the creative team problems. This matters
less on record, but the numbers given to Victoria (and indeed
to all concerned) are not top-drawer. Victoria, almost certainly,
would not have been amused. The title song has a jaunty, innocent
way to it, but there is little else to take away. Adams' lyrics
are best when they reflect the social background of Victoria's
reign, as in 'I've 'Eard The Bloody 'Indoos 'As It Worse' and
'All Glass / The Genius Of Man', which celebrates Joseph Paxton's
Crystal Palace, but elsewhere incline to the banal. Sven-Bertil
Taube is an attractively voiced Albert, but this musical biography
is necessarily constricted by the death of its hero half way
through the plot. Lewis Fiander and Aubrey Woods do what amount
to 'speciality' numbers as two of Victoria's Prime Ministers,
turns that now seem protracted. The recording was made eleven
years after the show's closure, and there is a suspicion throughout
that we are not receiving quite the genuine article. The orchestration
sounds more constipated than it did in the theatre, and the small
session chorus has a pronounced shrillness about it, with some
shrieking sopranos well to the fore. The foldout sleeve gives
an indication of the tremendous prettiness of the show's stage
design, a string of visual delights not matched by John Schlesinger's
direction. I And Albert is kaleidoscopic, of fleeting interest
musically, and in many ways thoroughly unsatisfactory, but is
nevertheless worth seeking out as a well-meaning attempt to do
justice to an old Queen.
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