CDs: Here We Are in Nice Again

An affectionate send-up of musical comedies of the 1920s, The Boy Friend made a big hit in London in 1954. Entirely the work of Sandy Wilson, The Boy Friend went on to run 2,084 performances in the West End. On Broadway, also in '54, the show introduced Julie Andrews to American audiences and played 485 performances.

Perhaps because the Broadway version had been an aggrandizement of an intimate, relatively quiet London show, a 1958 off-Broadway revival of The Boy Friend did even better than the Broadway edition, running 763 performances. A 1970 Broadway revival starring Judy Carne and Sandy Duncan flopped, but London has seen two successful revivals 1968/1984. And then there's Ken Russell's loony film version, from 1972.

The Boy Friend takes place in and around Madame Dubonnet's finishing school for young ladies, near Nice, France. When rich girl Polly falls for delivery boy Tony, she pretends to be Madame Dubonnet's secretary so as to make certain that Tony isn't just interested in her money. But Tony is actually the son of well-to-do Lord and Lady Brockhurst. And Polly's father, Percival Browne, turns out to be the former amour of Madame Dubonnet. Then there's madcap Maisie, who's wooed by wealthy Bobby Van Husen. After various complications, Polly and Tony reveal their true identities and are united, as are Dubonnet and Percy, Maisie and Bobby, and all of the other finishing-school girls with all of the other boys.

Bring Back Birdie, The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public and Annie 2 have demonstrated that musical sequels are a risky business. In 1965, Wilson wrote book, music, and lyrics for a sequel to The Boy Friend, bringing all of his characters back to Nice ten years later. Several cast members from The Boy Friend also returned: French actress Violetta was again Hortense the maid this time transformed into a hotel receptionist; Maria Charles was again Dulcie, the young lady briefly pursued by Lord Brockhurst; and Geoffrey Hibbert, the Broadway Brockhurst, became for the sequel the London Brockhurst. Just as The Boy Friend echoed the music of Kern, Youmans, and Coward, the new show would have tunes that were reminiscent of Porter, Gershwin, and Rodgers and Hart.

Set in 1936, the Boy Friend sequel was called Divorce Me, Darling!, and those finishing-school girls were now wives whose dreams of romance had been slightly tarnished. Polly arrives in Nice without Tony, while Bobby is without Maisie. Present too is "Madame K.," a mysterious international cabaret artist along the lines of Marlene Dietrich who turns out to be none other than Madame Dubonnet, now Polly's stepmother. When Tony and Maisie arrive, suspicions of infidelity cause friction. But all ends happily with the various couples reuniting.

Divorce Me, Darling!'s '30s-style score is as good as, if not better than, the '20s pastiche of The Boy Friend. But perhaps because the sequel was less intimate than the first show, featuring a bigger cast, orchestra, and physical production, or simply because it was a sequel, Divorce Me, Darling! failed, managing only an eighty-seven-performance run at the Globe Theatre in 1965.

In 1984, Divorce Me, Darling! had its American premiere at Houston's Theatre Under the Stars in a new version that featured an abridged account of The Boy Friend as a curtain raiser, thus combining the two shows into a single evening. Susan Stroman was the choreographer, and the company included Philip Wm. McKinley, director of The Boy from Oz. And there was some vindication in a well-received English revival of Divorce Me, Darling! at the 1997 Chichester Festival, with a glittering cast including Ruthie Henshall, Liliane Montevecchi, Marti Webb, Tim Flavin, Linzi Hately and Kevin Colson.

That 1997 production produced a TER CD that's one of the rare revival recordings that rivals the premiere cast album. And like so many revival CDs, it features material left off the original recording. But now, for the first time on CD, the English label Must Close Saturday has reissued the first Divorce Me, Darling!, Decca's 1965 London cast recording. It was previously reissued on LP by DRG.

The 1965 Divorce Me, Darling! recording features a singular instance on disc of an understudy filling in for an ailing star: Understudy Jenny Wren who otherwise sings the role of Nancy, one of the wives performs two of Polly's numbers, "No Harm Done" and "Together Again," "due to the indisposition of Patricia Michael," who sings Polly's other numbers. Polly in the '65 Divorce Me, Darling!, Michael would go on to take over as Polly in the '68 London revival of The Boy Friend.

On disc, Divorce Me, Darling! is a series of delights, from the zesty opening number, "Here We Are in Nice Again," to Polly's lament "Whatever Happened to Love?"; the elegant "No Harm Done," in which Polly and Bobby share a momentary flirtation; "Together Again," reuniting the two central couples, just before a dandy title song separates them again; "You're Absolutely Me," a "You're the Top"-style ditty for Bobby's spinster sister Hannah and Lady Brockhurst's nephew; and Maisie's curtain-time declaration that "Swingtime Is Here to Stay."

A leisurely duet for Polly and Tony, "Back Where We Started," is reprised by Lord Brockhurst and Dulcie, reunited from their "It's Never Too Late to Fall in Love" number in The Boy Friend. And, as performed by Joan Heal, star of the London hit Grab Me a Gondola, Madame K.'s two numbers --the rueful show-biz lament "Lights! Music!" and her eleven o'clock performance piece, "Blondes for Danger"- may be the campiest tracks to be found on any '60s English cast album.

In addition to that pair of Pollys plus Heal, Violetta, Charles, and Hibbert, the 1965 Divorce Me, Darling! features Cy Young Bobby, Philip Gilbert Tony, Anna Sharkey Maisie, and Irlin Hall Hannah. They're all grand, as are Ian MacPherson's orchestrations.

Wilson's scores for such other musicals as Valmouth, The Buccaneer, and His Monkey Wife are about as delicious as those of The Boy Friend and Divorce Me, Darling. Both the original London and Chichester revival recordings of Valmouth are on CD, just as the original London and Chichester Divorce Me, Darling! are now available. This Divorce Me, Darling! was always one of the very best London cast recordings of the '60s, right up there with Blitz!, Maggie May, and Robert and Elizabeth. But all of Wilson's scores are worthy of reinvestigation.

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