A new one-woman musical about one of the most tragic stars of the Swinging Sixties, Carole White of Cathy Come Home fame, will have its world premiere at the New Wimbledon Theatre Studio from 14-28 September 2023.
Called The Battersea Bardot and written by London-based playwright Ewen Moore, it launches Wimbledon’s Premieres series on 14 September and will trace the rise and fall of the fragile White who was feted in the UK, not only for her TV work as Cathy in Ken Loach’s stark 1966 portrayal of homelessness but the following year in another Loach kitchen-sink drama Poor Cow, this time a movie.
The same year she was working alongside giants of the game in Orson Welles and Oliver Reed (her name above the title too) in Michael Winner’s I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname. Before those three life-changing roles she had been a child actor, starred as Sylvie in the TV version of Up the Junction (again directed by Loach: and played Peter Sellers’ girlfriend in the violent 1960 film Never Let Go).
In 1968 Hollywood beckoned and spat her out. She made a few movies, mostly bad ones, got into the twilight world of alcohol and drugs, had flings with Reed, Frank Sinatra and Richard Burton among others and left with a career that promised so much on a downward spiral.
Returning to London in 1982 to star as Josie (taking over from Georgina Hale) in Nell Dunn’s Turkish Baths comedy Steaming, she got good reviews but pitched up late once too often and was fired. She went back to Florida and at just 48, tragically, she was dead.
The Battersea Bardot has already been seen as TV film back in 1994 with Wendy Morgan as White and received a rehearsed reading at the British Film Institute in 2019.
It is not the only new musical in Wimbledon’s Premieres season: See The Cheese, a comedy from Calimani Productions loosely based on the famous annual cheese-rolling contest in Gloucestershire, will arrive on 2 November.
Songs are by Patrick Steed and the script is by Mike Stocks, whose last show Oh Yes I Am!, about life as panto dame, received a five-star review from MTR when it played at the Bread and Roses pub theatre in December.
Jeremy Chapman
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