- the musical we feared about the Queen of the Music Halls,
Marie Lloyd …
SING A RUDE SONG
 Book
and lyrics by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin, with additional material
by Alan Bennett
Music by Ron Grainer
Original London cast: Barbara Windsor, Maurice Gibb, Denis Quilley.
Musical director: Alfred Ralston
SONGS: I'm In A Mood To Get My Teeth Into A Song; That's What
They Say; This Time It's Happiness; Whoops Cockie!; It Was Only
A Friendly Kiss; We've Been And Gone And Done It; Haven't The
Words; You Don't Know What It's Like To Fall In Love At Forty;
Waiting On The Off Chance; Waiting For The Royal Train; I'm Nobody
In Particular; Wave Goodbye; Leave Me Here To Linger With The
Ladies; The One And Only; Sing A Rude Song
- Barbara Windsor as Marie Lloyd, the Queen of the Music Halls?
She is a little too cutesy for me, and when the going gets emotional,
I am unsure about her ability to deliver. She lacks the mature,
glorious vulgarity of the real thing. This is rather a drawback
in a musical that gives almost all its best numbers (but, alas,
even the most attractive of them are not that good) to its leading
lady. The score, played here by a small orchestra that sounds
competent rather than inspired, has good ideas, neat lyrics and
workmanlike tunes, but it doesn't really catch fire. One of the
main problems, that nothing could suggest the greatness of Marie
Lloyd as well as the numbers she herself sang on the halls (among
them 'My Old Man' and 'Oh Mr Porter!') could not be overcome
by writing new songs. In this version, it is the mournful moments
that came across best. There is real bathos in Marie's plea that
'You Don't Know What It's Like To Fall In Love At Forty', and
even 'This Time It's Happiness' belies its title by turning out
to be another rather sad, rather than rude, little song, Indeed,
rude songs don't come into it at all. Playing her second husband
(and probably the only one who ever loved her) is Denis Quilley,
with nothing much to do here beyond singing 'I'm Nobody In Particular',
a title (to a different lyric and tune) made famous by Lloyd's
second husband, the music hall performer Alec Hurley. The third
star of the musical, playing Marie's third, jockey husband Bernard
Dillon, is inadequately impersonated by the pop singer Maurice
Gibb, who clearly hasn't a clue what he is doing here; his numbers
are the major embarrassment of the record. Brahms and Sherrin,
despite their innate theatricality and intelligence, never became
significant writers for the musical theatre. Perhaps, if Sing
A Rude Song is anything to go by, they simply lacked the gift
of being popular. The saddest thing about it all is that this
was Ron Grainer's final score for a musical, and it was not a
distinguished note on which to end. The show lasted 71 performances
when it opened at the Garrick Theatre in May 1970. In a London
that had just got out of the sixties it was strangely out of
place. If you are sufficiently interested in the story of Marie
Lloyd, you may find something to detain you here, but this is
a great opportunity messed up.
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