Ray C. Davis

RETURN

Ray C. Davis

content with one number and a routine

Ray C. Davis (the C presumably slotted in so that audiences didn't muddle him with the lead singer of The Kinks) started as a dancer and turned into a performer whose name appeared with alarming regularity on playbills of British musicals. He was never over the title, or given top billing, but wasn't in the wines and spirits either. Producers were reluctant to make him a leading man, but he was a solid supporting musical actor who was often rewarded by being given a number and a dance to go with it. For this sterling work, he was ungratefully handed a good number of solid flops, and one or two absolute clinkers. Incredibly, he made it into Who's Who in the Theatre despite the fact that nobody outside it has ever heard of him.









Davis trying to whip up some excitement with Trudi Van Doorn in Tom Brown's Schooldays







Davis studied at the Royal Academy of Dancing and made his first West End experience playing a student in Blitz! at the Adelphi Theatre in 1962. Four years later he began to make an impression when he was cast as Daniel in Gillian Lynne's production of The Matchgirls at the Globe Theatre. He had nothing to sing but was an important ingredient of 'The Hopping Dance', one of the more diverting moments of a pretty glum evening. In 1969 he played Anselmo in a revival of Man of La Mancha at the Piccadilly Theatre, and the following year he played Sam in Lie Down! I Think I Love You, a 13-performances effort seen at the Strand Theatre. In fact, every British musical he touched was pretty disastrous.

He was the subservient but bubbly factotum Obadiah in the hopeless Tom Brown's Schooldays at the Cambridge Theatre in 1972. His two numbers, 'Three Acres and a Cow' and 'One For Your Nose' were inane, but he managed - with the help of his stage partner, Trudi van Doorn - to take the audience's minds off the rest of the show. Later that year Davis embarked on a tour of West Side Story as Riff. It is a pity that he didn't get more decent parts in American shows in London, because he had the muscle to do them, but he did get to play Proteus in the British production of Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Phoenix Theatre in 1973, possibly his finest moment. But he struggled to be a recognisable name and to get part sin which he might show his stuff.

There were troubled times ahead. He landed the role of Jerry Jermingham in the Johnny Mercer-Andre Previn adaptation of Priestley's The Good Companions at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1974, but the show was best at being dull. He did the obligatory version of 'Slippin' Round the Corner' and made a damned good job of it too, but The Good Companions refused to catch the public fancy and only lasted six months. The next year he was Mr Wemmick in Cyril Ornadel's version of Great Expectations, but the days of Pickwick-like shows were over, and the piece only managed a British tour and then moved briefly to Canada before being stored.

In Kings and Clowns, Leslie Bricusse's laughable attempt at making a musical of Henry VIII in March 1978, Davis again tried to cheer up the proceedings, this time as the jester Will Somers, at the Phoenix Theatre, but he was only obliged to do it for 34 performances. There was another big flop the same year when he played the pleasant but unremarkable Harold in Bar Mitzvah Boy at Her Majesty's Theatre. Among the clutch of disappointing Jule Styne songs there was one for Davis, 'The Harolds of This World', that showed he could both be diverting and touching, but his participation in this tired casualty didn't win many admirers. Otherwise, Davis was kept busy in many provincial productions of musicals, took over from Roy Castle as Snodgrass in Pickwick, and played Wat Dreary in Jonathan Miller's production of The Beggar's Opera.

In 2000 he was seen again in London dancing his way through Hard Times at Her Majesty's Theatre, but it was sad to see so capable a player effectively as part of the chorus in the role of Whimsical Walker. It wasn't a part at all, but at least Davis got to understudy the show's star, Roy Hudd. Alas, Hard Times became just another British flop to add to Davis's already too long list.

Discography
Original cast recordings of Blitz! The Matchgirls Tom Brown's Schooldays Two Gentlemen of Verona The Good Companions Bar Mitzvah Boy Hard Times
RETURN TO STOUT-HEARTED MEN