The Tête à Tête Company at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith in November 2009
A Personal View by Adrian Slade
Fifty-five years after it first opened in London’s West End, a brand new London production of Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds’ Salad Days, has proved a big hit with critics and audiences alike. Sadly limited to a run of just ten days in November, it could well have filled the Riverside Studios theatre for many weeks more but, who knows, perhaps opera company Tête à Tête’s imaginative and perfectly period production by Bill Bankes-Jones might yet be given a further airing.
This revival captured the magic of the original show more accurately and with greater musicality than any of its predecessors that I can remember. You expect opera singers to sing well – perhaps to dance too, and they all did more than justice to Julian and Dorothy’s memorable songs. It was wonderful to hear Michelle Francis singing Jane’s songs as they should be sung and, drawing on his Gilbert and Sullivan background, Richard Suart’s Cleopatra was undoubtedly the best I have heard, as, a few minutes later, was Claire Machin’s rendering of Sand in My Eyes. Equally, Sophie Louise Dann and, again, Claire Machin as the two mothers caught the poignancy of We Don’t Understand Our Children beautifully. The whole cast also danced the light fantastic to Oh Look at Me or as they exhausted themselves with Out of Breath.
But the biggest plus of all was that, unlike some previous attempts at staging the show, the company recognised that the self-mockery, innocence and quirky absurdity of the Salad Days characters, in what in the sub text to its magic piano story is actually a parody of upper middle class life and concerns in the Fifties, require in their acting both comic skill and lightness of touch in equal measure. Michelle Francis and Sam Harrison as Tim delightfully achieved both as did, particularly, Ellie Robertson (Fiona), Sophie-Louise Dann (Lady Raeburn), Graham Howes and Andrew Hern (the two policemen) and, again, Richard Suart (this time as Uncle Zed). And, although he speaks only through his expression and body language, Lee Boggess was a Troppo in the best tradition of the part.
The audience cheered and those who have failed to get tickets will have missed a treat but don’t look back! With luck someone might yet give this production a re-run. Let us hope so.
Salad Days
The Times 17.11.09
OH HOW MY SPIRITS SOARED when the opportunity came to see again this enchanting musical. Like The Boy Friend, that other British hit of the Fifties, Julian Slade’s music, all of it, is artlessly tuneful, and the lyrics he wrote with Dorothy Reynolds are literate and witty. Their book follows the gentle adventures of Timothy and Jane, just out of university and wondering what to do with themselves, when, asked to look after a street piano for a month, they find it has the power to make all who hear it dance.
And dance they do, bishops policemen, spies and all, in a fantasy London summed up in a line from one of the songs as a time of ‘Summer and sunshine and falling in love’. Fleshing out this simple plot line are Timothy’s visits to his many uncles, cueing in amiable satirical sketches.
Tête à Tête, the adventurous company, directed by Bill Baker-Jones, gives this revival, almost uniquely for a musical, a traverse staging. The ground is covered with Astroturf and the audience sits on either side of a stretch of lawn, at tables, on ordinary seats or on grassy ledges, from which, during moments of exuberance, they will be invited to join the dance.
The key to the success of this production is the casting. The strangled Knightsbridge vowels are wonderfully absurd but the company does not mock them . Nor does Sam Harrison overdo Timothy’s courteously gauche behaviour – “Jane, would it help at all if you married me?”- while Michelle Francis’ Jane is a performance of bubbly charm, merry and sprightly, with a soaring singing voice that is lovely to hear.
One after another the delightful songs flow past – I Sit In The Sun, We Said We Wouldn’t Look Back, Oh Look At Me. Two them, including the cod torch song You’re The Sand In My Eyes, don’t appear on the original cast recording and make this revival particularly special.
Did you get the impression that I enjoyed my evening? Gosh, yes.
Jeremy Kingston
The Daily Telegraph 16.11.09
LIFE WASN’T EXACTLY TERRIFIC IN 1954 when Salad Days opened, and ran for more than 2000 performances. Post-war austerity still prevailed and earnest young students in duffel coats lived under the constant shadow of nuclear annihilation.
The show’s creators, Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds, blithely ignored all that and wrote a show about a couple of posh kids, graduating from Oxford (or Cambridge even!-Ed) and being bequeathed a magic piano called Minnie that made everyone dance in the park whenever it was played. The score is infuriatingly hummable, the lyrics occasionally witty, but more often simply daft (I particularly love the line ‘Cleopatra, Egypt’s answer to Montmartre’, which makes no sense at any level apart from the fact that it rhymes and somehow make you laugh out loud). At the end, the leading characters go for a ride on a flying saucer and love prevails.
The Tête à Tête company present the show with tongue-in-cheek wit and palpable affection. The normally cheerless Riverside Studios have been transformed into a sunny, spacious London park, with acres of Astroturf and tables where the audience drink Pimms and eat cucumber sandwiches while watching the show. The characterisation is deft, the New Look costumes and cut-glass accents an evocative delight, the unamplified singing a treat. Bill Bankes-Jones production provides the perfect antidote to the November glooms and you will leave the theatre with a spring in your step and Oh Look At Me! I’m Dancing on your lips. Bliss.
Charlie Spencer
Time Out 17.11.09
These days, Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds's 1954 musical is probably best known for inspiring a youthful Cameron Mackintosh to become a producer. Salad Day' represents a world that was wiped off the stage by a combination of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger and the American musical West Side Story. Now the opera company Tête à Tête is staging an enchanting revival in the unlikely setting of the Riverside Studios. Designer Tim Meacock lets the sunshine into the normally gloomy Studio 2 by covering the walls with gold-coloured curtains and laying the floor with artificial grass. A light touch is needed for such featherweight entertainment and crucially director Bill Bankes-Jones never patronises the material nor sends it up.
The plot unusually brings the hero and heroine together right at the start. Just down from Oxford, Timothy and Jane get married and he takes the first job he is offered, which turns out to be looking after a magic piano for £7 a week. When played, the piano forces everyone in the park to dance, even disapproving dowagers and cabinet ministers. The spirit of Mary Poppins hovers over the stage as choreographer Quinny Sacks makes arms and legs move without their owners' consent. Michelle Francis as a resourceful Jane and Sam Harrison as lanky Timothy slip so naturally into the 1950s that it's hard to believe they normally live in the twenty-first century. They are backed by a terrific cast, which effortlessly sings the delightful songs without amplification to the accompaniment of pianos, double bass and percussion. A topping treat for a cold November night.
Jane Edwardes
Metro (London)
Julian Slade’s musical, first seen in 1954, is serenely clean, tame and frothy. It hoists your spirits and Bill Bankes-Jones’s revival, while not polished, at least makes it possible to bask in Slade’s charming melodies.
The plot is tolerable foolishness. Tim (Sam Harrison), a decent and scrupulously lustless chap, is fresh from university. So is Jane (Michelle Francis), a wonderfully sensible honey-blonde with an open smile, who spends most of her time spinning round Hyde Park in breezy summer dresses, looking like something out of a detergent ad. The young pair fall in love in impeccable RP, marry unbeknown to their parents, and come into possession of a magic street piano that makes everyone kick up their heels and dance. The happy denouement involves – what else? - an alien and a flying saucer. Dorothy Reynolds’ lyrics (and Julian’s –Ed), with their spoofery of the upper classes, earn their keep.
Forthcoming Amateur Productions
'SALAD DAYS' - Dewsbury Arts Group, Studio Theatre, Dewsbury (Seats 100). 4 performances.
3-6 November 2010
'SALAD DAYS' - Micro Musicals, Swindon, Wiltshire. Two performances at the Swindon Arts Centre (seating 200) 14-16 October
‘My Inspiration’ – Sir Cameron Mackintosh - from 'Times 2' - 10.3.09
As the Victoria & Albert Museum opened its new Theatre and Performance galleries in March Nancy Durrant of the Times asked leading figures in show business to choose a favourite exhibit and what it meant to them. Among them Sir Cameron Mackintosh chose Minnie, the original ‘magic ‘ piano from ‘Salad Days’ and said:
‘Minnie the Magic Piano’
‘The first time I saw ‘Salad Days’ I wasn’t quite eight and I was dragged by my aunt to see what was my first musical. I didn’t want to go. I thought it might be a bit cissy but, of course, I fell in love with it immediately and promptly demanded that three weeks later, on my birthday, we go and see it again. Dressed in my wee kilt, I marched down the aisle afterwards to meet Julian Slade who, I had discovered by then, was playing the piano in the pit. He was very nice and took me back-stage and showed me around, showed me how the flying saucer worked, how the scenery came in and out, how, indeed, Minnie the magic piano was a dummy piano – a very lovely one- but he played Minnie in the pit . It had a special sound to it. He could press a pedal and it made that ‘ting ting ting’ that went into ‘Look at Me I’m Dancing’ and made everyone dance. So I saw exactly where everything was …and it completely inspired me.
‘I remember looking at all this rather solemnly, as you do when you’re a young person trying to make up your mind, and thinking, this is what I want to do when I grow up. Within a few months I’d worked out that the job I wanted to do was producer. I thought, yes, I can do this.
I kept in very close touch with Julian. I used to get permission from school, or lie that some relative was dying, so that I could go off and see first nights in Bristol. I always remember my housemaster saying ‘I hear your grandmother is terminally ill ….again. What’s opening?’’
THE JULIAN SLADE AWARD
In each of his latter years Julian used to help to fund one Bristol Old Vic Theatre School student for one year. His hope was always that the student who received his extra help would prove musically talented or particularly suited to performing in musicals. In 2008 his family re-established this ‘Julian Slade Award’ and the award for the coming year was presented recently to Alistair Watt, who has just completed his first year of the School’s two-year acting course. During the coming year he will be appearing in musical and other productions staged by the School.
ALI WATT
The 2010 Award winner
Ali, 26, is from Edinburgh and is a graduate from the University of Glasgow with a degree in Law.
His amateur and university musical roles, before beginning training at the School, included Bobby in Company, Roger in RENT (both Edinburgh Fringe), Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Riff in West Side Story, Don Lockwood in Singin' in the Rain and Emcee in Cabaret.
He is delighted to receive the Julian Slade Award, particularly after recently playing the roles of Nigel Danvers and Uncle Clam in Salad Days.
He has also played the roles of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, Stanley in The Birthday Party, Dr. Rank in A Doll's House and the title role in Scaramouche Jones.
Previous Award Winners
Agent contact:
Jane Lehrer Associates,
100A Chalk Farm Road,
London,
NW1 8EH
Both played, sung and recorded in 2007 by Julian’s brother, Adrian Slade
‘The Funny Side of Slade’
A home recorded but technically re-mastered CD of 12 of Julian Slade’s funniest lyrics and songs, including three never heard on record in any other context. This CD was performed and recorded by Adrian, a successful cabaret performer in his own right in the ‘50s and ‘60s, as a tribute to Julian’s wit. Occasionally he and Julian used to perform some of the songs in cabaret together. Get a flavour of the CD below.
‘Julian didn’t just write pretty songs. His lyrics were also often very funny. I would like people to realise that!’ – Adrian Slade
A studio recorded CD that features the cabaret songs and monologues of Adrian Slade, written and performed by him in BAOR, Cambridge, London venues and at social/charitable occasions across the country between 1955 and 1963. Here is a unique commentary in words and song on those social and political times of transition before the swinging ‘60s kicked in.
Many of the songs were performed in Cambridge Footlights cabarets between 1957 and 1959 when Adrian’s cabaret partners were John Drummond and Joe Melia, followed by Geoffrey Pattie and Peter Cook. Get a flavour of the CD below.
NOW JUST £10 EACH (inc p&p) OR £18 FOR 2 (inc p&p).
Maximum order: 2 of each. Available for purchase (UK only) by e-mail request to: adrian.slade@talktalk.net, or by post (with cheque) to:
Adrian Slade, 28 St Leonards Road, London, SW14 7LX. (Telephone: 0208 392 1955)
ALL cheques must be made payable to Adrian Slade and posted to this address. No credit card payments. Allow 28 days for delivery to the name and address you have provided.
‘The Time of My Life’ - A special Julian Slade DVD
By kind permission of Sir Cameron Mackintosh, visitors to this website can see extracts from this unique DVD recording of a special evening staged by Sir Cameron in honour of Julian Slade at the Theatre Royal Bristol in 2004. The occasion being celebrated was the 50th anniversary of the first night of ‘Salad Days’ but this specially staged show also celebrated all the musical work of Julian Slade.
Among many familiar faces from the theatre the large cast included Anthony Andrews, Alex Jennings, Rosie Ashe, Anna-Jane Casey, Christopher Biggins, and Simon Green.
Featuring many songs from Julian’s shows, the original performance ran for 75 minutes. Here is a unique opportunity to get the flavour of the occasion itself the occasion itself and some of Julian’s songs in four extracts from the DVD. The fourth extract features Julian and Cameron Mackintosh at the end of the show, the very last time Julian was seen on stage..
(Click on the audio controls on the videos to view).
‘Vanity Fair’ & ‘Follow that Girl’
‘Mummy Doesn’t Like Me’ ('Free As Air')
‘Pull Yourself Together’ ('Trelawny')
‘We said we wouldn’t look back’
(with Cameron Mackintosh and Julian Slade)
Slade Caricatures Revealed
Lady Macbeth (Julian Slade)
Macbeth (John Barton)
On March 15 2009 Cambridge University’s magnificently renovated and modernised ADC theatre was officially re-opened by Prince Edward.
Julian Slade wrote his first two musicals, ‘Bang Goes The Meringue’ and ‘Lady May’, when he was at Cambridge. Both were performed at the ADC, where he also acted in a number of productions. Less well known is that in those days he was also a sharp caricaturist. Recently presented to the ADC by his family, three of his Cambridge caricature originals are now displayed for the first time in the new studio area. Dating from 1949, the two featured here show Julian himself in the unlikely but, for him, successful role as Lady Macbeth and John Barton as Macbeth. With his and Julian’s Cambridge contemporary Sir Peter Hall, John Barton was later co-director and founder (1960) of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Other caricatures by Julian are also on display at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School
ALI WATT
By kind permission of Sir Cameron Mackintosh, visitors to this website can see extracts from this unique DVD recording of a special evening staged by Sir Cameron in honour of Julian Slade at the Theatre Royal Bristol in 2004. The occasion being celebrated was the 50th anniversary of the first night of ‘Salad Days’ but this specially staged show also celebrated all the musical work of Julian Slade.
