The Daily
Constitutional's Editor Adam takes a personal look at an almost-forgotten
London musical, a sadly neglected London Theatre, and a legendary London
musical theatre man…
When Lock Up Your Daughters was revived at
Chichester Festival Theatre back in 1996, reviewers expressed their discomfort
at the subject matter: the musical is based on Henry Fielding’s 1730 play Rape
Upon Rape.
Fielding’s play is a satire on
licentiousness in general, and was written in the shadow of the infamous case
of Francis Charteris, an aristocrat sentenced to death for raping a servant.
His popular nickname was The Rapemaster General of Great Britain. Charteris
plays a cameo role in Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress.
He also raises his ugly head along the
route of my own Seven Deadly Dials walk,
on which we pick our way through the recently-respectable (ish) theatres in
search of a wicked London mercifully banished to the pages of history. But
that’s just one of the reasons that this near-forgotten musical fascinates me.
While it is difficult to
imagine a 21st Century revival of a musical based on such subject matter, the piece remains ripe for study as both a timepiece from the 1950s, and as a
landmark London work – for its London location, for its London theatrical home and its creative team of Londoners. Not
least its famous East End lyricist…
Lock Up Your Daughters opened in 1959, and
was the production that hanselled The Mermaid Theatre, the first new playhouse
built within the City of London for almost 300 years.
Here’s how the event was reported on the
sleeve note of the original cast album…
And indeed bells are the first sound we
hear at the top of the score – a smart motif from composer Laurie Johnson:
bells are very much a London thing, a fact that the creative team behind the
Olympic opening ceremony grasped in their vast and vivid production in 2012.
Laurie Johnson – born in Hampstead in 1927
– is a name well-known to movie and TV buffs. He composed the soundtrack to
Doctor Strangelove and the famous theme to that quintessential Swinging London
TV romp The Avengers.…
Johnson won an Ivor Novello Award –
Britain’s most prestigious award for composition – for the melodious score of Lock Up
Your Daughters. And there's still some innocent fun to be had in the juxtaposition of cha-cha beats with 18th century costumes.
In conjunction with his lyricist – much
more of him anon – he gives us such gems as It Must Be True, a satire on press
morals peopled with boldly drawn Scotsmen and Turks. It’s pure Hogarth-meets-musical
hall. At times it’s rumbustuous stuff:
Whether your daughter is pretty or
plain/Once she has done it she’ll do it again/
Fathers! Lock Up Your daughters now!
Again, its scope to cause offense today is
wide indeed, right down to a closing musical monologue peppered with coy gags about
“saucy” assault. Defensible? The best this writer can do is to suggest
that its approach is thoroughly that of the seaside postcard. An approach no
less worthy of reproach, perhaps, but very much part of the problem when
unearthing timepieces. Mores change.
 |
| The Mermaid in 1959 |
The short history of the theatre in which
the piece was staged has a drama all its own.
The Mermaid Theatre was the first new theatre
within the City of London since the 17th Century – and its subsequent closure
as a theatre has incited great passion among the theatrical community.
It was founded by Bernard Miles, who also
adapted Fielding’s original play into the musical at hand. The design of the
playing space eschewed the common proscenium arch and balcony set-up, creating
both a versatile playing space and a single bank of seating in the auditorium.
The musical review Cowardy Custard was staged here in 1972, a piece widely
regarded as having reignited interest in the songs of Noel Coward (more on that
another day).
Miles’ first Mermaid Theatre had been
housed in a barn at his St John’s Wood home. He was later ennobled as Baron
Miles of Blackfrairs – only the second actor ever to be granted the peerage
(Olivier was first).
The Mermaid’s short history has been a
chequered one, and its fate remains a matter of concern for theatre lovers, as this article in The Stage newspaper shows.
These days it exists blandly as a
conference centre, having lost its theatre status in 2008.
That first production of Lock Up Your Daughters was directed by
Peter Coe. And it established his reputation as a director of note. By
1961 he had three shows running simultaneously in the West End. One of them,
Oliver!, he took to Broadway where he was nominated for a Tony Award in 1963. Coe was
also a Londoner.
No tale of London theatre is complete
without an Irishman. Enter Sean Kenny, the legendary set designer who went on
to win a Tony for his work on Oliver!. Kenny is the subject of three portraits
in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery – they can be viewed HERE.
Which brings us back to the lyricist of
Lock Up Your Daughters: Lionel Bart. Creator of Oliver!, son of Jewish
immigrants, bona fide Cockney, self-taught popular music genius and personal
hero of this correspondent. We’ll look at his achievements tomorrow…
POST UPDATED 21/4/16
A London Walk costs £10 – £8 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment