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1949 In King's Rhapsody, the outstanding British success of the year, Ivor Novello reached the apogee of his very particular sort of Ruritanian operetta. Novello played Nikki, the dissolute heir to an imaginary tin-pot state called Murania (it sounded like a proprietary eyewash). The libretto was slack but enlivened by the incomparable presence of its author. The songs, notably the ecstatic 'Someday my Heart will Awake', were everything, the lush music perfectly dressed with Christopher Hassall's delicate lyrics. The show made a star of Vanessa Lee, but British musicals seemed not to have a clue what to do with her afterwards. Two of the other contenders of the year were well-meaning - a costume piece for Adele Dixon dragging up as a soldier but, underneath, remaining Belinda Fair, and the new Vivian Ellis- A. P. Herbert collaboration Tough at the Top, their first work since the hugely popular Bless the Bride. Neither shows over-excited the public. Pat Kirkwood and Bobby Howes hung on for three weeks in a knocked-up effort called Roundabout. Cicely Courtneidge did considerably better in a mediocre piece, Her Excellency, a musical where the comedy seemed to come first. Revivals of that old war-horse Me and My Girl and the Grieg bio-musical Song of Norway were greeted without much enthusiasm. The American hefty was Brigadoon, with a superb score by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and a British-based cast that soon established the show as a solid runner. A master of the intimate revue, Laurier Lister, created Oranges and Lemons, with a company that included such luminaries of the genre as Max Adrian, Diana Churchill and Elisabeth Welch, but it had a modest run. Cecil Landeau's Sauce Tartare struck a more popular note and played for over a year, fronted by artistes who used broader strokes, including Ronald Frankau, Renee Houston and Claude Hulbert. |