Controversial and neglected musicals are being rediscoverd writes Richard Hodkinson

MUSICAL theatre appears to be in rude health. No fewer than 18 long-playing, all singin’, all dancin’ shows are comfortably ensconced in the West End’s largest houses with Billy Elliot and Guys and Dolls due to arrive shortly.
The success of the hugely profitable mega-shows disguises a period of real decline for the musical, however. Of the mainstream shows currently playing, 11 are either revivals or re-workings. Of the rest, Les Miserables, Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, Blood Brothers and The Woman in White have been running for years or are certain to do so. That leaves Victoria Woods’ Acorn Antiques and Stomp, a dance piece rather than a true musical. New, small-scale or quirky shows do occasionally emerge on the fringe but few make an impression on the mainstream West End audience.
To make matters worse, Fleet Street’s Bridewell Theatre, once London’s most effective showcase for adventurous musical theatre, was forced to close at the end of last year following the withdrawal of its funding.
There is still Ian Marshall Fisher, however – tireless champion of the obscure, the overlooked and the under-appreciated. His Lost Musicals series presents concert stagings of American shows that have slipped from the public consciousness.
He is about to enter his 15th season having previously brought more than 70 pieces back from the dead. On Sunday evenings through March Sadler’s Wells’ Lilian Baylis Theatre will host Harold Rome’s Fanny (a show premiered in 1954) with Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings to follow in May/June and Stephen Sondheim’s Evening Primrose in July.
Running the annual series has developed into a full-time job for Marshall Fisher. How did he embark upon his labour of love?
“Through Eugene O’Neill, strangely enough,” he says. “In the late 1980s I was researching O’Neill at Stanford University in California. Among the documents in the library there was a copy of the score for Fanny. I opened it and completely forgot about O’Neill.
“I became intrigued by the fact that the major writers of American theatre, people like Cole Porter, Weill and Hammerstein wrote a lot of stuff that may never be performed and has certainly never been seen in this country. There were such extraordinary combinations of talent working on Broadway, too.
“Cole Porter and Orson Welles wrote a show together, and Truman Capote wrote one.”
More than just an exercise in unearthing novelty items, Marshall Fisher’s innovation has lead to the rediscovery of several shows that have gone on to enjoy lucrative commercial revivals.
Among the works that have enjoyed a greatly increased profile after being featured in Lost Musicals is Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s One Touch of Venus. “We did that one at the Royal Opera House,” says Marshall Fisher, “which has stimulated revivals by opera companies, and Out of this World by Cole Porter was done at last year’s Chichester Festival.”
Despite the fact that Marshall Fisher’s confessed obsession for his subject places him firmly in the ‘English eccentric’ bracket, it is notable that all of the works he has rescued are American.
“European musicals are very thin on the ground,” he says. “In Britain between, say, 1910 and 1960, we were going through a fallow period, musically. Nothing new was happening here, but people were flooding into the USA from all over the world, particularly Europe, with all kinds of musical ideas.
“The great American advances in musical theatre that make that period so exciting were actually great European advances. They just happened to take place on Broadway because of immigration.
“I think we’ve lost a certain sophistication,” he continues, “we don’t have so many points of reference to draw upon, from a literary point of view. Today the writer is not so important and shows are not so content-driven.
“In the mid-20th century, producers would put together a team of writers who would create a show. It would then try out over six months in every major American city with the writers sitting-in on every performance and doing rewrites in their hotel rooms after the show. This would often continue right up to the Broadway previews. That doesn’t happen now, partly for economic reasons, but also because there isn’t the passion anymore. Shows are produced by a conveyor belt process.”
Marshall Fisher’s enthusiasm for Fanny is obvious; it is this year’s opening show and a revival of the first piece he put on stage back in 1990.
But can he identify one show whose rediscovery has given him most pleasure. “Yes,” he says. “Flahooley. This is a show that absolutely died when it opened on Broadway in 1950. The music was by Sammy Fain, but the book was by E Y Harburg and Fred Saidy who had just had a huge hit with Finian’s Rainbow. It’s a childlike family entertainment about a toy maker who makes the Flahooley Doll.
“The thing is, when the doll is turned upside down it shouts ‘Dirty Red, Dirty Red!’. The show is a satire and a comment on the McCarthy hearings, at which EY Harburg had been denounced as a communist. There were Flahooley Doll burnings in the show and the audiences just hated it, this sugar-coated dig at American society. But I loved doing it.”
• Fanny runs every Sunday evening between March 6-27. Silk Stockings runs Sunday evenings between May 22 and June 12. Evening Primrose runs Sunday evenings between July 3-24.
All performances take place at Sadler’s Wells Lilian Baylis Theatre, Rosebery Avenue, EC1 and begin at 4pm. Call the box office 0870 737 7737 for details.