CDs: Won't You Charleston with Me?
An affectionate spoof of musicals of the 1920s, The Boy Friend was entirely the work of Sandy Wilson. The Englishman's first solo book show, The Boy Friend began as a two-act, one-hour frolic, put on for three weeks in 1953 at the off-West End Players Club, a London venue that concentrated on music-hall recreations and holiday pantomimes. Wilson wrote the principal roles in The Boy Friend specifically for members of the Players company, but when the leading lady took sick, understudy Anne Rogers moved up to the central role of Polly Browne.
This first incarnation of The Boy Friend received raves, so Wilson was encouraged to expand the show into a full-length, three-act piece, which the Players mounted for six weeks. In spite of more great reviews, commercial managements deemed the show too special, so the Players moved it to North London's Embassy Theatre for another six-week run. Finally, the Players were emboldened to take The Boy Friend to the West End, where it opened in January 1954 at Wyndham's Theatre, remaining there for five years 2,084 performances.
By the time of the second Players Theatre run, Wilson had another musical on in London, The Buccaneer, about a children's comic strip and featuring another fine score. In 1965, Wilson wrote a sequel to The Boy Friend; called Divorce Me, Darling!, the show was not a success but boasted a score every bit as good as The Boy Friend's.
The Boy Friend's heroine, Polly Browne, is a young heiress, attending a finishing school in the South of France. She must pretend to have a boyfriend so as to avoid fortune hunters, but falls for Tony, who appears to be just a delivery boy but is in reality the son of a lord.
A perfect little show, The Boy Friend proved to be one of the finest of all post-World War II English musicals. It managed to transcend its lampooning of '20s shows to become a delightful work in its own right, with a score that features nary a weak number.
New York producers soon came calling, and The Boy Friend was picked up for Broadway by the team of Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin Guys and Dolls, Can-Can. The original London staging had deliberately avoided camp and excess and had been played more or less straight. Although the '54 Broadway version was to have essentially recreated that London staging, it was eventually decided that drastic changes were called for in New York. During rehearsals, Wilson and the show's original director, Vida Hope, were banished from the theatre, and Feuer took over the direction without credit. The result was a much broader, more burlesqued piece, but it was nonetheless a hit, running 485 performances.
The Broadway Boy Friend boasted a much larger orchestra and a more elaborate physical production than the concurrent London version. Fresh from her performance in the London Palladium pantomime Cinderella, Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut as Polly, receiving glowing notices and getting quickly snapped up for My Fair Lady the following season.
With the original London production still playing in the West End, New York got its first Boy Friend revival in 1958, this time at off-Broadway's Cherry Lane Theatre, in a staging that was warmer and more intimate than the Broadway account. The off-Broadway production played 763 performances. London saw Boy Friend revivals in 1968 Comedy Theatre, 365 performances and 1984 produced by Cameron Mackintosh, at the Old Vic and Albery Theatres. A Broadway revival with Laugh-In's Judy Carne as Polly and an adorable Sandy Duncan as her madcap cohort Maisie lasted only 119 performances in 1970.
A bizarre 1972 film version, featuring Twiggy, Tommy Tune, and Glenda Jackson, used a show-within-a-show framework, focusing on a provincial company putting on The Boy Friend. The Boy Friend went on to become a perennial in England's regional theatres, almost all of which have mounted the show at one time or another. Two years ago, Julie Andrews returned to the show, this time as director, for a run at Bay Street Theatre. Andrews will again direct The Boy Friend in 2005, this time for Goodspeed, and that production is scheduled to tour.
The Boy Friend has been well represented on disc. The original 1954 London cast album was released as a ten-inch LP, and is the shortest of the show's recordings. Its Polly, Anne Rogers, would go on to replace Andrews in the London My Fair Lady and take leads in the London productions of She Loves Me, I Do! I Do!, and No, No, Nanette revival. Rogers is scheduled to play a principal role in the upcoming London stage musical version of Billy Elliot.
This first recording features the original melody of the song "The Riviera"; because it sounded too close to an actual '20s show tune presumably "The Varsity Drag" from Good News!, the melody of "The Riviera" was revised for Broadway.
There are two London revival cast recordings 1968 on EMI, 1984 on TER; two Broadway recordings 1954 on RCA, 1970 on Decca; an Australian revival recording from 1969; and the film soundtrack.
Sepia's new Boy Friend CD offers the original '54 London recording. The accompaniment is only piano and drums, and the recording runs only about a half-hour. The songs "The You-Don't-Want-to-Play-with-Me Blues" and "Safety in Numbers" are omitted entirely, and there are cuts in most of the other numbers.
But if this first Boy Friend can't compete with subsequent recordings, all of which are more comprehensive and feature full orchestra, this is the only place to hear what The Boy Friend originally sounded like. It's also an appealing performance, with fine work from Rogers, Joan Sterndale Bennett, Anthony Hayes, and Maria Charles.
Because the '54 London cast recording of The Boy Friend is so brief, Sepia has added to the new CD numerous bonuses. First, there are two orchestral medleys of music from The Boy Friend, recorded in '54. The remainder of the disc offers '20s orchestral and vocal recordings from three genuine '20s musicals, just the sort of shows Wilson was spoofing in The Boy Friend.
From Rodgers and Hart's The Girl Friend, there are four, mostly orchestral tracks. We get two Stanley Holloway My Fair Lady-Ivy Tresmand duets from Vincent Youmans Hit the Deck. Finally, and most valuably, there are all eight tracks of the 1925 London cast recordings of Youmans' No, No, Nanette, featuring Binnie Hale, Irene Browne, and George Grossmith.
AFTER THE BALL Sepia
Just prior to the Irish Repertory Theatre's New York premiere last month of Noel Coward's After the Ball, I offered a background piece on the show's original 1954 London production. I had not expected to find the rare '54 London cast recording returning to the catalogue simultaneously with the off-Broadway production, but here it is, also courtesy of Sepia.
Based on Oscar Wilde's 1892 Lady Windermere's Fan, After the Ball was Coward's last musical written directly for the West End, and his first musical adapted from pre-existing material. Coward was once again pursuing the field of operetta that he had visited with such earlier musicals as Bitter Sweet, Conversation Piece, Operette, and Pacific 1860, a style that, by the '50s, seemed out of date by contrast with the brassier American musicals imported to London.
After the Ball encountered tryout troubles, particularly when it became evident that the voice of one of its leading ladies, Mary Ellis, an operetta diva of the '20s and '30s, had deteriorated. Then too, it was felt that the wit of Coward and Wilde did not make for a smooth blend. For these and other reasons, After the Ball managed only an188-performance run.
But the score contains much that's admirable. After the Ball was the first Coward musical to receive a full-length, twelve-inch LP cast album, on Philips. Because actor Shamus Locke, who played Lord Darlington, was under contract to another company, the recording omitted both of Locke's numbers.
The score is highlighted by fine choruses "Oh, What a Century It's Been," "London at Night", duets "I Knew That You Would Be My Love", and trios a sharp number for three wives, called "Why Is It the Woman Who Pays?". Lady Windermere Vanessa Lee has three good soprano solos, "Sweet Day," "Clear Bright Morning," and a full-blown operatic "Aria."
The Irish Repertory Theatre production of After the Ball interpolated three other Coward songs "Let's Say Goodbye," "Never Again," "Remember Me", dropped four of the original songs, and rearranged the order of numbers. So for those interested in hearing Coward's After the Ball score, Sepia's CD premiere of the cast album is considerably more valuable than the recent staging.
The After the Ball CD's bonus tracks go to two of the Ball principals. Graham Payn is heard in songs from three of his other Coward musicals. There are the title song and "Matelot" from the revue Sigh No More. There are three tracks from Pacific 1860, the 1946 Drury Lane show, two of them featuring Payn's co-star, Mary Martin. Then there's Payn's live performance of a song from Ace of Clubs, introduced by Coward. For the last two tracks on the CD, we get Vanessa Lee's lovely recordings of two songs from Ivor Novello's last musical, Gay's the Word.