CDs: Who's This Geezer Hitler?

It's hard for me to be objective about Blitz! It was the first show I ever saw in London, and I so loved it that I saw it again on a second trip a year later. Watching Blitz! in the summers of 1962 and 1963, a new world of British musical theatre opened to me, and the fact that Blitz! was an extremely English show made it all the more fascinating.

By the early '60s, composer-lyricist-librettist Lionel Bart had to his credit three hit musicals. The first two --Lock Up Your Daughters and Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be-- may not have been the sort of shows that traveled well. But with his third attempt, Oliver! 1960, Bart struck international gold.

Because of the enormous West End success of Oliver!, expectations were high for Bart's next London musical. For this one, Bart would use his childhood memories of London's Jewish East End during the blitzkrieg of 1940, when Hitler's air force bombed the city. The show was called Blitz!, and it was to feature music, lyrics, and direction by Bart, with a libretto by Bart in collaboration with Joan Maitland.

Retained from Lock Up Your Daughters and Oliver! was the brilliant set designer Sean Kenny, whose work was key to Blitz! That's because the show was a huge spectacle, recreating on stage such venues as Victoria Station, Petticoat Lane, and the Bank underground station, and such sights as London on fire during an air raid. The most expensive British musical to date, Blitz! experimented with complex scenery that featured four revolving house units and an enormous, mobile overhead bridge carried on two shifting towers.

For its story, Blitz! focused on two families, the Jewish Blitzteins and the cockney Lockes. The Blitztein mother's pickled herring stall adjoins father Locke's fruit stall in Petticoat Lane, and the two are antagonists. But son Georgie Locke falls for Blitzstein daughter Carol, who is blinded in an air raid. Harry Blitzstein deserts the army, and Mrs. Blitzstein is almost killed. The show was a tribute to the indomitability of London that got the city through the events of 1940. As Bart himself said, "Blitz! is three human stories inside an epic canvas; the major human conflict --the major plot-- personifies the spirit of London and how that spirit developed during the period of the piece."

Perhaps because it was the follow-up show to Oliver!, critics were hard on Blitz! when it opened at the Adelphi Theatre on May 8, 1962, although everyone acknowledged the show's breathtaking physical production. Dry wit Noel Coward was quoted as saying of Blitz! that it was "twice as loud and twice as long as the real thing." Even with mixed reviews, Blitz! became the show to see, and its run lasted 568 performances, curtailed only by the fact that the show was so expensive to run.

There were rumors of an American production, with Molly Picon, Martha Raye, or even Ethel Merman in the large, central role of Mrs. Blitztein. But in addition to the fact that it would have been hugely expensive to produce on Broadway, Blitz! was essentially unexportable, as the show's recreation of London during the blitz would not have struck the same nostalgic chords with New York audiences.

After Blitz!, Bart would have only one more London success, Maggie May. That was followed by the twin disasters of Twang!! in London and La Strada on Broadway. To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the London blitz, the Royal Shakespeare Company announced a 1990 revival of Blitz! But when sufficient funds were not forthcoming, the production, with Georgia Brown the potential star, was cancelled. It fell to the National Youth Theatre to revive Blitz!, at the West End's Playhouse Theatre. This production became the basis for the Northern Stage Company revival that toured the U.K. and starred Diane Langton A Little Night Music, The Rink as Mrs. Blitztein.

But no revival of Blitz! is likely to sound as glorious as the 1962 London cast recording, originally an HMV LP, later an EMI CD in 1991, and now available again from EMI. The Blitz! score was so lengthy that three songs "Bake a Cake," "Leave It to the Ladies," "As Long as This Is England" had to be left off the original LP. But they were issued separately on an EP single called Salvaged from 'Blitz!' On CD, the three songs have been integrated into the complete recording.

From the terrifically spirited opening number, "Our Hotel," sung in the underground shelter, Blitz! overflows with grand items. Bart was capable of perfect period pastiche: In the underground, the Londoners listen to a radio broadcast of Vera Lynn, an actual musical icon of the '40s, singing the longing "The Day After Tomorrow," which sounds like a genuine period standard but was written and recorded by Lynn for the show.

There are extractable pop numbers, like Georgie's "I Want to Whisper Something," Georgie and Carol's "Opposites," and the big ballad, Carol's "Far Away." It hit the charts in Shirley Bassey's cover version. There is sweet material for the youngsters in the evacuation anthem "We're Going to the Country" and the game of "Mums and Dads." Belter Toni Palmer leads "Leave It to the Ladies" and the catchy salute to Petticoat Lane, "Down the Lane."

But the best of Blitz! is found in the powerful numbers for Mrs. Blitzstein. It was the only musical starring role for the unglamorous but heroic Amelia Bayntun, who delivers her numbers in a voice of great strength and gusto. She leads the exciting march "Who's This Geezer Hitler?" On her own, she has the dramatic arias "Be What You Wanna Be," "Bake a Cake," and "So Tell Me," the latter the score's emotional high point.

With wonderful sound and deployment of stereo, the Blitz! cast album is a must-have, one of the essential London cast recordings of the last fifty years.