Well, if it’s 5 May, it must be… of course, the 64th anniversary of the truly disastrous opening night of the result of John ‘Look Back In Anger’ Osborne inexplicably trying to write a musical.
Osborne was famous for stroppy social realism, so what possessed him to make this move is anyone’s guess — even if the aim was to satirise gossip columns and the ruling class. Still, it was a mistake he would only make once, for several reasons…
His first… interesting decision was to base the script on an early play the Royal Court had turned down. As Osborne biographer John Heilpern says in A Patriot for Us, “they couldn’t believe it had come from his pen”. Then he started writing lyrics…
Heilpern says his “hunch is that he meant Slickey to be an updated Vile Bodies”… and then quotes some of Osborne’s shots at rhyming couplets, at which point, the phrase “Social satire was never Osborne’s forte” seems both euphemistic and superfluous.
…and that’s leaving aside the bit where the lead character sings
I’m just a guy called Paul Slickey / And the job that I do’s pretty tricky
Osborne had the sense to get eminent people in: architect, interior designer, and later Royal Academy president Hugh Casson as set designer, and Kenneth Macmillan (later head honcho at the Royal Ballet) as choreographer. And then elected to direct it himself.
As director, he took charge of casting, and, looking about for the ideal man to play his “magnetic” columnist, opted for “unexciting, though charming, band singer Dennis Lotis”, rather than a little-known actor who auditioned…
Then he published the script to coincide with the premiere, dedicating it to (oh dear) those ‘donkeys’, the critics. The whole thing is reproduced in academic George Wellwarth’s The Theater of Protest and Paradox:
No one has ever dedicated a string quartet to a donkey although books have been dedicated to critics. I dedicate this play to the liars and self-deceivers; to those who daily deal out treachery; to those who handle their professions as instruments of debasement; to those who, for a salary cheque and less, successfully betray my country; and those who will do it for no inducement at all. In this bleak time, when such men have never had it so good, this entertain- ment is dedicated to their boredom, their incomprehension, their distaste. It would be a sad error to raise a smile from them. A donkey with ears that could listen would no longer be a donkey; but the day may come when he is left behind because the other animals have learned to hear.
All in all, then, all the ingredients were in place for a proper, out-and-out, copper-bottomed, total fucking disaster. On that score, at least, Paul Slickey did not disappoint.
…and that was while they were still inside. After the curtain came down…
How did he take it? Well… he declared “It’s an honour to be booed by certain people”, and two days after opening informed the New York Times “There is not one daily critic in London intellectually equipped to review a play properly.” So, not exactly on the chin, then.
By then, of course, the critics had had their say. Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times was kind, going for the delicate phrasing of “For the moment, his ambition exceeds his grasp”. Some of the others, though…
Still, at least the highlight of his career was still ahead of him: playing the Arborian priest in Flash Gordon
