- ROBERT SWANN
-
 What
a jolly nice chap he looked. Robert Swann was properly handsome,
with a gently heroic air and a voice that might have been lent
from the angels. He was as good as many others who attracted
more attention, and a good deal better than many. For a handful
of shows, it seemed as if the British musical theatre might have
a place for him, but it didn't really work out. He did leave
some pleasant memories, and many years later turned up selling
insurance policies on television, looking reassuringly like a
jolly nice insurance agent.
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- His musical career began when he played Mark Ingestrie in
a production of Sweeney Todd at the Pembroke, Croydon in June
1968, but there was a serious advance in December 1971 with His
Monkey Wife, a Sandy Wilson musical that got no further than
Hampstead Theatre Club. As the long-suffering hero Alfred Fatigay,
Swann gave an admirable account of a jolly decent English chap
who is lumbered with a feather-brained fiancé and slowly
finds his affections turning to a rather more attractive chimpanzee.
It is difficult to imagine the role having been better played,
and Swann acquitted himself well in a handful of neat little
numbers that included 'Emily's Waltz', 'Home and Beauty and You',
and 'Live Like The Blessed Angels'. But by the beginning of the
1970s Wilson's style was very out of favour, and Swann's good
work in His Monkey Wife was largely unheeded.
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- The following year he landed a plum role, Ashley Dukes (second
leading man) in Harold Rome's epic musicalisation of Margaret
Mitchell's Gone With The Wind at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
He was firm as a rock in it, and although he had a limited part
in the rambling score he shone in what he did, making a perfect
partner for the chilly Patricia Michaels. There was rather more
fun to be had in Very Good Eddie, a pretty presentation of an
early Jerome Kern musical at the Piccadilly Theatre in July 1976.
As Dick Rivers, Swann showed a resourceful charm. Along the way,
there were repertory productions of Cabaret, and he was in Cowardy
Custard in Toronto. In 1984 he played Ivor Novello's old part
of Rudi in a repertory edition of The Dancing Years at the Theatre
Royal, Norwich, but - true to the original plan - didn't get
to sing in it. One could understand his leading lady singing
endless songs about how much she wanted him.
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- Perhaps musicals were not important to him. He did good work
with the Bristol Old Vic and the National Theatre and at such
top-line theatres as the Manchester Royal Exchange, and hopefully
was immensely well paid for a string of insurance advertisements
on commercial television.
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- Discography
- Original London cast recordings of:
His Monkey Wife
Gone With The Wind
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