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1967 The biggest musical successes of the year were the least deserved. At Drury Lane, a vehicle for Harry Secombe, The Four Musketeers, was desperately poor. It certainly didn't earn its place in that noble theatre, and had a score of utter banality. John Hanson was brought back in triumph in another surprise runner, a shoddy revival of The Desert Song, although he did have the help of Patricia Michael as his leading lady. A revival of The Boy Friend, with a pleasant cast, did well and ran almost a year. A Moral re-Armament piece, Annie, finally made a star of Margaret Burton, but it was a dismal creation with the most basic of songs and a cheap production. Incredibly, there was enough interest for it to run for a year. Vivienne Martin made another shot at being a star in Queenie, in which Ted Willis's libretto was all in rhyming couplets. The cast sounded promising, having Bill Owen, Cheryl Kennedy and Paul Eddington among its number, but Queenie was panned and the closing notice was quickly put up. A new Julian Slade musical based on Nancy Mitford's novel, The Pursuit of Love, was well mounted at Bristol but didn't transfer. At Edinburgh, the first of a little series of musicals about the Rector of Stiffkey appeared in A Life in Bedrooms (a year later another show about the indiscreet vicar would find its way to London). From Oxford, A Present From the Corporation was seen for three performances with a cast that included Julia McKenzie and John Gower, but its lyricist (David Wood) would make his reputation as the writer of childrens' shows. Its composer, John Gould, never quite made it. The story of the queen of music hall was told in Daniel Farson's The Marie Lloyd Story at Stratford East, with Avis Bunnage well-cast as its star. It would be another show about Marie Lloyd, Sing a Rude Song, that made it to the West End in 1970 with Barbara Windsor starring. The Man from the West, a Julian More musical with music by David Russell, was seen at East Grinstead. Here was no West End outing, either, for Who's Pinkus, Where's Chelm?, but its title hardly helped. Revues had more or less died. One of the last gasps, In the Picture, flickered briefly, hidden from view at the May Fair, but the material seemed tired and the performers a mere echo of the Golden Age. More solid success was given to the American musicals. Fiddler on the Roof took most of the interest, propelling Topol and the show's main songs to huge popularity. Sweet Charity ran over a year. In the shadow of such precursors as Oklahoma!, 110 in the Shade had a mild reception and didn't hang around. |