In the expensive realm of musical comedy, it’s impossible to predict what will take off and what will crash and burn. Oliver! ran for 2,618 performances, but no other Dickens adaptation has succeeded— and Oliver! had to overcome a reluctant producer who’d suggested it could be much improved with an ‘all-black cast’. And would Lionel Bart’s plan to cast Elizabeth Taylor as Nancy, Richard Burton as Bill Sikes, and Spike Milligan as Fagin have helped or hindered the longevity of his show?
Flops provide rich subject matter —lovingly explored in Must Close Saturday — and it is easy with the benefit of hindsight to scoff at the bizarre notions that have been set to music: the electric chair; Dr Crippen; Scapa Flow (‘Earl Mountbatten inspected a cast line-up’); the match girls at the Bryant & May factory; Francis Drake (‘randy sailors pillaging Portsmouth in search of the city’s whores’); Hoxton Babies’ Home; premature ejaculation (referred to as ‘an impatient groin’, with Roy Castle); Christmas crackers (Pull Both Ends — it opened and closed in July); highwaymen; and Barnado’s orphanages.
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