CD Review: The Pleasure Garden – Original London Cast

THE PLEASURE GARDEN – Original London Cast (Jay Records CDJAY 1467).

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

The latest piece from the ever-productive Glenn Chandler continues with a theme often at the heart of the Scots playwright’s work, that of the gay community and its machinations. However, apart from being a playwright for both theatre and radio, Chandler is also a crime fiction novelist, and an original screenplay writer for television and films. He is probably best-known as the creator of the Taggart detective series for Scottish Television which ran from 1985 until 2010 but are still constantly repeated around the world.

Like several of Chandler’s plays such as Cleveland Street: The Musical, Sandel, Kids Play, Fanny and Stella and The Good Scout, his latest, The Pleasure Garden was staged at Above the Stag, the UK’s only LGBT+ theatre, in London’s Vauxhall area but which sadly closed earlier this year. It is hoped that new premises will eventually be found.

Meanwhile, enjoy one of the Above the Stag’s most popular shows that is now available on CD. It was fitting that The Pleasure Garden should open in Vauxhall as it was set in the adjacent Royal Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens which in their day, the 1850s, were as popular as Hampstead Heath, Regent’s Park, Hyde Park and all the other open spaces in London. Apart from the public entertainments such as musical concerts, impersonators, acrobats and circus acts, the Gardens provided the opportunity for more private pleasures and assignations.

The plot concerns the whole gamut of Londoners who set out to enjoy themselves by taking their pleasures as they find them, be they lords, ladies, princesses and others from all walks of life, higher or lower class. The show opens in the present day with a young builder, Alex, unearthing a locket which could well have been there at any time during the lifetime of the Gardens from the 17th century until they closed in 1859. The action then moves back in time to portray what the visitors were up to in those mid-Victorian days – and nights!

Among the visitors are Tom, a young gardener, who finds love poems attached to the flowers, and Ralph, a shipping clerk, author of the romantic verses to his would-be amour, young Tom, as he is too nervous to confront the gardener himself. However, Tom has another admirer, the aristocratic Lord Roger who, despite being married to Lady Maude, pursues Tom but, as he sets about chatting up the object of his love, his wife appears and ruins the moment accompanied by her own admirers, one of the performing acrobats.

Tom has ambitions to be a gardener in a big mansion and, when the Gardens are threatened with closure, he is encouraged by Lord Roger to go and work at his stately pile, Benningfield Hall. However, the romance between Tom and Ralph carries on in what is a delightful piece of musical theatre that shines a spotlight on the mores of Victorian England where it was a punishable offence to be gay. The sheer hypocrisy of the times is deftly shown without any undue proselytising in this charming piece that is both amusing and serious in its intent.

Chandler’s book and lyrics hit the right spot throughout and the music by Charles Miller is memorable, romantic, jolly and dramatic in its evocation of a bygone age. Following a delightfully charming number such as ‘The Loveliest Blossom on the Bough’ comes a comical paean of praise, ‘Can a Man Help Being a Sod?’ extolling the virtue or vice of sodomy. Other songs that stand out include ‘Finding the Man in Me’, ‘What’s Wrong With a Little Detente?’, ‘The Place I Left Behind’, ‘It’s Complicated’ and ‘The Gardens of Love’. But, really this is a splendidly thoroughly satisfying score that must be one of the best to come out of the British musical stage in a long time.

The performances are all very grounded from Sam Baumal as Tom, Jay Worley as Ralph, and Rory-Charlie Campbell as Lord Roger, to Ashleigh Harvey as Lady Maude, Jennie Jacobs in the disguise of Captain Antrobus and Benjamin Wong’s Doctor Watt and his crossdressing alter ego Princess Saura. Jonathan Harlaw and Steve Watts complete this ideal cast.

It is to be hoped that The Pleasure Garden will one day appear back on stage, perhaps if Above the Stag finds new premises, or if some enterprising producer decides that it is worth another life because it certainly has the ability to appeal to a wider audience.

Michael Darvell