Notable Productions provides an indepth look at shows that were performed in Australia, from Broadway musicals to comedies and revues. As well as including details of the creators, the players and the theatres, it brings together material that has been digitised by Theatre Heritage Australia, such as programmes, photographs and film clips, and items from major Australian and international institutions.
For some people the name Quality Street will immediately suggest the 1901 play by J.M. Barrie, while others will recall the brightly decorated tins of chocolates produced by Mackintosh’s in England. Indeed, the chocolate range, which was introduced in 1936, was inspired by Barrie’s play, the romantic characters on the tin being based on Miss Phoebe Throssel and her dashing suitor Captain Valentine Brown. Both the play and chocolates evoke the romance of an earlier era of gallant gentlemen and genteel ladies.
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum is probably the funniest of all farces written for the stage and its roots happen to be the oldest. Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart’s inspiration for the book came from the works ot Titus Maccius Plautus, a Roman playwright of the third and second centuries BC (254 to 184 BC to be exact).
The Pajama Game had its genesis in a novel, 7½ Cents, which author Richard Bissell based on his experiences in his family’s pajama factory in Dubuque, Iowa. Broadway producers Hal Prince and Robert Griffith saw the story’s musical possibilities and snapped up the rights, but persuading people to work on the project proved far more difficult.
The musical comedy entitled The Girl Friend that was seen in the West End in 1927 and subsequently in Australia, as staged by J.C. Williamson Ltd., was very different from that performed on Broadway in 1926, as it merely took the title and the hit songs from the Rodgers and Hart score, and grafted them onto the plot and song score from the contemporary Broadway musical Kitty’s Kisses.
The most successful of the postwar works of Leo Fall, and one of his most delightful, Madame Pompadour was written for the Berlin theatre and as a vehicle for its reigning queen of the musical stage, Fritzi Massary. Like those of many Operetten before and since, the amorous adventures of the plot had little to do with the historical Madame Pompadour, but were simply tacked on to the recognizable and title-worthy figures of France’s Louis XV and his mistress.
2023 marks fifty years since the death of Noël Coward. Born in London in 1899, Coward went on to become one of the most celebrated actor-vocalist-composer-lyricists of his generation. His parents were both musical. His father sold pianos and his mother was an amateur vocalist. It was customary for the family to sit around the piano of an evening and enjoy a sing-along. Coward’s remarkable gift for music and acting was evident at an early age.
When war broke out in Europe in August 1914, P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) was in America. For the next five years he remained there, keeping a healthy distance between himself and the hostilities. Though accused by some critics for displaying unpatriotic behaviour, poor eyesight made him ineligible for military service. He therefore chose to remain in the USA to concentrate on developing his career as a writer of amusing and witty lyrics for light escapist entertainment. During this time, he also continued to write comic stories featuring ‘Psmith’ and his character of ‘Jeeves’ made his first appearance in the serial Something New.
The remarkable story of how Annie got her gun and ascended into musical comedy heaven had an unlikely beginning—when a drunken World War Two soldier proudly showed the bemused patrons of a New York bar the worthless prizes he’d won in the shooting booths at Coney Island.
Cole Porter’s 1941 musical Let’s Face It! had the distinction of being the only new musical to be staged in Australia by J.C. Williamson’s during the war years of 1940–45.
The Ballets Russes is an immense subject celebrated in literally hundreds of books, theses and articles over the years since its birth in 1909, when the Premiere of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes was held at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. But here is neither the time nor place to do more than concentrate on a few brief, but exhilarating, moments.
Ethel Merman was undoubtedly one of Broadway’s greatest musical stars of the the 1940s and 50s, creating principal roles in Panama Hattie (1940), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), Call Me Madam (1950), and Gypsy (1959). Though Annie Get Your Gun enjoyed the longest run, Call Me Madam is probably her best remembered role on account of her recreating the character of Mrs. Sally Adams in the 1953 film. The musical also proved a hit for one of Australia's foremost ladies of the stage, Evie Hayes, an American who became our very own ‘Hostess with the Mostes’.