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1962 Two British musicals ran longer than anything Broadway sent over this year. The gargantuan Blitz! was Lionel Bart's first musical explosion since the huge success of Oliver! The scope of its ambition proved to be rather more in its settings (by Sean Kenny, who had designed Oliver! and would also design Bart's last decent musical Maggie May) than in its songs. Amelia Bayntun burst into the spotlight as the show's star, and was never heard of again. It seemed almost a crime that the much less ambitious Lock Up Your Daughters should find almost as much success, and a new lease of life, in a long-running revival. The other British musicals to reach the West End were not made welcome. An unwieldy adaptation of Thackeray's Vanity Fair had Sybil Thorndike in her first musical at the age of eighty, and music by Julian Slade, but suffered critical assaults and was then killed off by wintry weather. An all-male show (the musicals answer to the opera world's Billy Budd), Scapa was improbably cast and had a score by the writer of the play on which it was based, Seagulls Over Sorrento. But Hugh Hastings couldn't make a success of his musical adaptation, and Scapa sank with all hands. What a Crazy World and a Moral Re-Armament piece Space is so Startling displayed not very much originality. There was much more pleasure to be got from a play principally intended for children, Cindy-Ella, with an all-black cast and a score made up mostly of established music. It was not a notable year for the American musical. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had a score from Jule Styne that wasn't up to his usual standard, despite one or two wonderful numbers, and the all-British cast was seriously under-powered, with Dora Bryan miscast as the diamond-seeking heroine. It managed six months. Fiorello! had generated much interest and a prize and a good run in New York, but this political biography suffered from the fact that its hero was almost unheard of in Britain. There were opportunities for Marion Grimaldi, Patricia Michael, Nicolette Roeg and Bridget Armstrong, as well as for a few men, but the play never seemed like a winner. Another considerable American success, the little spoof Little Mary Sunshine, was transported in from off-Broadway. It didn't suffer from having a British cast; indeed, it benefited, but even Patricia Routledge, Bernard Cribbins and Joyce Blair, and a nice company and delightful production didn't endear it to the critics. The cast gave back their cheques to the management to try to keep it going, but it was already a lost cause. Noel Coward's Sail Away had first been seen in New York and reappeared in London with its original star Elaine Stritch. There was a general agreement that it was full of good things, if not quite much of a musical. It certainly had some excellent songs and a surprisingly masculine performance (for a Coward musical) from its hero. Revues were shrinking. The imported Black Vanities wasn't around for long. 4 to the Bar had a cast of four headed by the staunch but featureless Ian Wallace, supported by the sparky Rose Hill and the writing and performing team of Peter Reeves and Bryan Blackburn (both of whom turned up in the cast of Fiorello!). It was more of a concert party than a revue, but was mildly welcomed. There seemed a great deal more point to the concept of A Thurber Carnival based on the works of the American humorist James Thurber, but the excellent cast headed by the American star Tom Ewell and Betty Marsden, couldn't keep it going beyond three weeks. Another transatlantic offering, The Premise, proved more to the public's liking, staying for six months. There was good work, too, and a host of talent in the creative team of England, Our England, but Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall's excursion into revue was quickly over. Alec McCowen and Prunella Scales dipped their toes in the revue waters in Stanley Daniels's intimate Not to Worry? The very brief run was certainly a cause of worry. |