Greetings from London and many thanks for the latest Newsletter which I thoroughly enjoyed, especially the articles on the musical Robert And Elizabeth in the feature Notable Production. Sadly I didn’t see the original London cast of this musical but I did see the post-West End tour when it played Bristol Hippodrome for a few weeks in 1967 (Programme pages attached).
Laurence Hardy, Jane Fyffe and Kevin Colson were the leading players then but for some strange reason Jane Fyffe did not sing Elizabeth’s eleven o'clock number 'Woman and Man’ at the performance I attended. Jane’s brother Patrick (famous later for being Dame Hilda Bracket in the popular drag duo Hinge and Bracket) is supposed to have joined the cast of this musical while it was playing Bristol but looking at my programme I obviously saw the musical before he had been added to the cast.
June Bronhill later took the musical to South Africa in 1969 for a short season where her Robert was the actor Neville Jason, who also appeared opposite June in her EMI recordings of Lehar’s The Count Of Luxembourg and Noel Coward’s Bitter Sweet.
BBC television screened extracts from the original West End production in 1964 and June and Keith Michell also appeared on a few TV shows singing songs from the musical. They appeared on Eamonn Andrews ITV show in 1965 and in 1971 on a Keith Michell special, June joins him to sing ‘I Know Now’ (this can be seen on YouTube). A year later in 1972, Keith Michell did a series on shows that had played certain West End Theatres. In the episode on the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, June again joins Keith to sing the songs ‘I Said Love’ and ‘I Know Now’. (June also sings ‘My Hero’ in that programme as The Chocolate Soldier also played the Lyric.)
Thank you again for such an interesting feature.
All best wishes,
Geoff Bowden
London, UK
