Less well-known Musicals

Angela Cockburn looks at a series of musicals that were sold through newsagents

Over the last few months, I’ve been having fun exploring CDs of musicals published by TER Orbis as a magazine-mounted collection sold through the newsagents. I’d bought No 1 when it came out – The Phantom of the Opera, half-price as an introductory special – but didn’t continue with it, so I was delighted when former Fine Music volunteer Elizabeth Hill gave me a basket with the entire collection, courtesy of her friend, Patsy Gore.

Sorting through, I found lots of less familiar titles in among the old favourites, and I was given the go ahead to create a series for the third Saturday of the month in the Stage and Screen 6pm timeslot.

Organised into themed groups of three at a time, over the months we’ve explored showbiz several times – musicals about being in musicals are very popular, particularly if the heroine takes over the lead role in time for the end curtain. We’ve looked at love a lot, and we’ve explored some surprising real-life themes such as trying to have a baby. That musical is called Baby. Really.

The Hired Man, about farming in England, mining, and World War I also tackled some big themes, and Valmouth, rather gently, touched on racial prejudice.

October was a ‘hard world’, whether you were about to be drafted into the Vietnam War in Galt MacDermot’s Hair, Mr Chips failing to communicate his love of the classics to several generations of English public school boys (in an original cast recording featuring John Mills), or a cabaret performer on tour who develops the courage to build her act on what she really feels in I’m getting my act together and taking it on the road (in another original cast recording).

In November ‘Life is not so easy’, especially, as it turns out, for Candide. Excerpts from Bernstein’s musical are presented by the Scottish Opera conducted by Justin Brown. In Noel Coward’s Bitter Sweet a society girl marries her music teacher and finds herself entertaining in a nightclub while his old girlfriend Manon (not that one) sings If love were all, I should be lonely. This 1988 Bittersweet was a production by the short-lived New Sadler’s Wells Opera company, which was established with the specific purpose of performing neglected operettas. The third in the group is Ivor Novello’s The dancing years which again explores love between different social classes, this time against the background of the rise of Nazism, in a special recording featuring the National Symphony Orchestra.

And in December we revisit Annie, Pickwick and, of course, Scrooge. Drop in on Auntie Mame for a little more Christmas cheer, and add some festive tracks from Doris Day, Fats Waller, and Johnny Mercer (with Jack Teagarden) to conclude the series.

Do join me for the last couple of programs in this entertaining series.