Profumo the Musical – Waterloo East Theatre

Profumo the Musical at the Waterloo East Theatre, London

Profumo the Musical was performed at the Waterloo East Theatre, London.

As part of Waterloo East Theatre’s New Musical Showcase Season, Gordon Kenney presented the world premiere of Profumo the Musical, pipping Andrew Lloyd Webber to the post. The latter’s musical Stephen Ward about the Profumo affair will open at the Aldwych Theatre in December.

It is now 50 years since the infamous trial of the most famous political scandal in modern British history which ultimately brought down the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan.

In 1961 at a party at Cliveden, the home of Lord Astor, John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War and husband of Valerie Hobson, one of Britain’s best-loved actresses, was introduced to young nightclub dancer Christine Keeler by Stephen Ward, who was an osteopathic physician and party arranger to the rich and famous. During their short affair Keeler was also involved with Yevgeny ‘Eugene’ Ivanov, a Soviet senior naval attache at the Russian Embassy, who was spying for the KGB. With Cold War tensions mounting and the Cuban missile crisis imminent, MI5 was naturally worried about national security, and what was to be just a brief fling soon turned into a national scandal, bringing the British establishment to its knees.

Had Profumo not lied to the House of Commons about the affair and had two of Keeler’s ex-boyfriends not come to blows, with one of them trying to shoot his way into Ward’s apartment, where she was hiding, things could have turned out quite differently.

So a story set in 60s London, telling of love, lust, espionage, sexual misconduct and betrayal, with the Kray twins thrown in for good measure, should be the perfect formula for a musical.

The problem with this production is that it doesn’t quite know what it is. Is it a serious drama or a comic book send-up? In this showcase most of the cast doubled up with varying degrees of success. The versatile Michael Howe gave us two very contrasting performances as the suave Ward and the pipe-sucking Harold Wilson, as did Darrie Gardner playing the heart-broken Valerie Hobson and a very northern Barbara Castle. As Wilson and Castle they gave us the comedy highlight of the evening in their gloating victory song ‘Put the Kettle On’.

David Pendlebury played both Profumo and Peter Rachman, the intimidating boyfriend of Mandy Rice-Davies’ (Keeler’s partner-in-crime) with ease. Rachal Olivant and Charlie Oliva worked well together as Keeler and Rice-Davies, showing the right amount of naivety and guts. Anton Thompson and Paul Stephenson were both good as the West Indian boyfriends of Keeler, Johnny Edgecombe and Lucky Gordon, but it just didn’t work when they played the Russian Ivanov and Prime Minister Macmillan. James McGregor and Matthew Lloyd Davies completed the cast as the Kray brothers.

Ably directed by Matthew Lloyd Davies and choreographed by Victoria Edge, with good musical support from Tim Gilvin, this showcase was obviously a scaled-down version of the show. Kenney has done a good job with the varied songs he has written, invoking the period of the swinging sixties, such as the opening number (‘You’ve got rock‘n’roll, fewer people on the dole. Monochrome TV, Ban the Bomb, the CND. Oh you, you, you, you’ve) Never Had It So Good’. But he should seriously think about letting someone else take a look at the rather clichéd script. Unfortunately, as was the case with the far superior version of Whistle Down the Wind by Richard Taylor and Russell Labey for the National Youth Music Theatre, once Lloyd Webber’s show appears on the horizon, it is hard to see a future for this show.

Peter St James