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1954 In triumph, Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend made it to the West End, beginning a lengthy run and striking a hopeful note for the future of the British musical. The hope was fulfilled by the unexpected success of Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds's Salad Days, a show with its own pronounced brand of artless charm and some of the prettiest songs of the 1950s theatre. Wilson and Slade's shows ran happily on into old age. London had earlier been beguiled by Slade's attractive score to Sheridan's operetta The Duenna. Lumbering into view came Wedding in Paris, a patently second-drawer affair starring (astoundingly) Anton Walbrook and offering a comeback to its gracious leading lady Evelyn Laye. She didn't seem to realise that her songs (lyrics Sonny Miller, music Hans May) were dismal, but it didn't bother audiences either; they kept it going for a year. Noel Coward's adaptation of Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan had an agreeable score and some fine reasons for being a success, but only managed a short run. Mary Ellis returned after a long absence to play Mrs Erlynne, but the strong soprano beloved of Ivor Novello had worn badly. Vanessa Lee played Lady Windermere in her first musical since King's Rhapsody, and never did another. But After the Ball contained much that was in Coward's best vein. The most fascinating flop of the year was a version of Arnold Ridley's old repertory company standby, The Ghost Train, but Happy Holiday - although staged just before Christmas - didn't raise much goodwill. Eric Maschwitz and George Posford had toiled to create it. A revue by Michael Flanders and Donald Swann featured an old variety act, the sisters Elsie and Doris Waters, with Desmond Walter Ellis, Elisabeth Welch, Ian Wallace and Fenella Fielding. It was another Laurier Lister production, but the company list sounds like a nightmare. For whatever reason, Pay the Piper speedily closed shop. Going to Town was an Alan Melville revue with music by Kenneth Leslie-Smith, Donald Swann and Charles Zwar. The superb cast included Dora Bryan, Hermione Baddeley, Ian Carmichael, Rachel Roberts and Vivienne Martin, but its short stay sounded a warning across the bows of the intimate revue. More successful was another Peter Myers revue, Intimacy at 8.30, which employed Joan Heal, Ron Moody and Joan Sims to good effect. Maureen Stevens wrote Cockles and Champagne, a revue with - unusually - an almost completely female cast. The mix of personalities was almost alarming: the ladies included Renee Houston, Miriam Karlin, Phyllis Neilson-Terry and Patricia Burke. Fenella Fielding and Elizabeth Seal were in it too. Among the songs were some written by David Heneker and Sam Coslow. A revue without names or well-known writers, Light Fantastic, played two weeks at Hammersmith. Variety carried on doing its own thing to revue. Off the Record, brought in direct from a summer season at Blackpool, had Eddie Calvert's trumpet, Nat Jackley's eccentric dancing and Arthur Worsley's ventriloquism. More popularly, Jimmy Edwards and Tony Hancock starred in The Talk of the Town. Al Read, a superb comic, was the headliner in You'll Be Lucky. Down the cast list were Josephine Blake and Peter Gilmore. The Crazy gang uncovered a new box of old tricks in another long-runner, Jokers Wild, with original songs by Ross Parker. It wasn't a vintage year for American musicals. Hideously unattractive to look at, Cole Porter's Can-Can got by with a mainly English company headed by a popular singer, Edmund Hockridge. Pal Joey, one of Rodgers and Hart's most aggressive musicals, ran for six months. |