Sophie-Louise Dann joined the cast of Ivor Novello – The Great British Musical at the Matcham Room, London Hippodrome. Picture: Roy Tan
Ivor Novello – The Great British Musical at the Matcham Room, London Hippodrome.
Nostalgia, romance and pride in our fair land were the order of the day with Ivor Novello – The Great British Musical at a packed Matcham Room in a show that has been revisited and revised since the Welshman’s fan club first saw it at the St James Theatre Studio in July.
New names Sophie-Louise Dann, always an asset with her strong characterisations and bouncy personality, and Richard Kent, whose version of one of Novello’s few comedy songs ‘And Her Mother Came Too’ (from the 1921 revue A to Z) was a first-half highlight, bolstered a cast which again featured West End top-liner Robert Meadmore, Katy Elizabeth Treharne, Annatt Bass and the fine-voiced high tenor Rhidian Marc, moonlighting from Les Miserables.
The show’s musical director Ross Leadbeater played his compatriot’s greatest hits with love and no little distinction on the piano, and Russell Grant, who became almost teary as he recalled getting his first break at 22 in Novello’s King’s Rhapsody in 1973 “playing a 14-year-old and a 40-year-old”, was informative as an affectionate narrator.
Grant was particularly protective of the gay actor-composer who was jailed for two months in the 1940s for misuse of petrol coupons, a serious offence under rationing laws in post-war Britain, saying what a great injustice it was that the great Novello should suffer this indignity at the hands of a “deeply homophobic magistrate”.
While Novello fretted that this misdemeanour might rob him of the adulation of the British public, it had the opposite effect and his return from Wormwood Scrubs to The Dancing Years was accorded a rapturous ovation. That one ran for 696 performances, his previous big hit Glamorous Night played for 14 months in Drury Lane and saved the Theatre Royal at a time when it was in real trouble, Perchance to Dream in 1945 lasted 1,022 performances, and King’s Rhapsody, the show during the run of which he died suddenly, aged just 58, in 1951, ran for 841. A very wealthy man, he left the equivalent of more than £4 million in today’s money.
Noel Coward was a great friend and admirer of Novello’s matinee-idol looks, saying, according to Grant: “The two most beautiful things in the world are Ivor’s profile and my mind.” Grant also amused us by recalling that The Dancing Years got the nickname ‘The Advancing Years’ with Novello playing the romantic lead at the age of 46.
I was amazed to learn (not from the show) that Novello was so versatile that he wrote the dialogue for Johnny Weissmuller’s first Tarzan film in 1932 and, not being au fait with his early career, was also unaware that he had starred in an early Hitchcock silent movie The Lodger. It was also an eye-opener to discover that although Novello starred in six of his eight musicals, he never sang in any.
Yet Novello’s greatest gift was surely to find exactly the right mood for two war-time eras with songs like ‘Keep the Home-Fires Burning’, written when he was just 21 in 1914, ‘Rose of England’ and ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ (beautifully sung as a duet by Treharne and Bass at the end).
It may sound a bit old-fashioned now and it was surely even a little gloriously old-fashioned then, but they are melodies which will linger on and be forever part of a particularly British heritage.
All the singing was right out of the top drawer and the only real negative on a very pleasant evening was the lack of information. Having paid a decent price to watch, surely the audience should have been given a sheet of paper telling them who the large cast were – a photo of each would have helped to identify them – and a list of the songs they would be singing.
Musical staging was by Philip Joel, Gregor Donnelly was in charge of design and Jon Winn was on lighting.
Jeremy Chapman
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