At the Drop of a Hat

At the Drop of a Hat
Opening night program
Music	Donald Swann
Lyrics	Michael Flanders
Book	Michael Flanders Donald Swann
Productions	1956 London fringe 1959 Off-Broadway

At the Drop of a Hat is a musical revue by Flanders and Swann, described by them as "An After-Dinner Farrago". In the show, they both sang on a nearly bare stage, accompanied by Swann on the piano. The songs were linked by contemporary social commentary, mostly by Flanders.

The show opened at the New Lindsey Theatre, a fringe theatre outside the London West End theatre district, on December 31, 1956. It was successful and transferred to the Fortune Theatre in the West End on January 24, 1957, where it ran for 808 performances. On October 8, 1959 the show opened in New York City at the Golden Theater, running there for 215 performances.

Although they had performed together in the summer of 1940 in a revue they both directed and staged, this was Flanders and Swann's first show performing in the format for which they would become successful, and from 1959 to 1967 they toured with it off and on, performing it a total of 1,700 times over 11 years around the world.^[1] The two continued to perform together for three decades.

Contents 1 Description 2 Songs 3 Unreleased Songs 4 References 5 External links

Description

The two-man show was performed with Flanders in a wheelchair (he had polio) and Swann seated at a piano on an otherwise empty stage. The show consisted of a collection of mainly humorous songs, written by them, connected by topical comments. A second revue called At the Drop of Another Hat was produced in 1963.

Each performance ended with the song "Hippopotamus", in which the audience was encouraged to join in, followed, in Britain, by a musical rendition of the Lord Chamberlain's requirements.

Songs

• "A Transport of Delight" (The Omnibus Song)
• "Song of Reproduction"
• "Greensleeves"
• "In the Bath"
• "A Gnu"
• Songs for Our Time:
  • "Philological Waltz"
  • "Satellite Moon"
  • "A Happy Song"
• "A Song of the Weather"
• "The Reluctant Cannibal"
• "Je suis le ténébreux"
• "Design for Living"
• "Tried by the Centre Court"
• "Kokoraki...A Greek Song"
• "Misalliance"
• "(Have Some) Madeira, M'Dear?"
• "Too Many Cookers" (added in later performances and recordings)
• "Vanessa" (added in later performances and recordings)
• "Tried by the Centre Court" (added in later performances and recordings)
• "The Wom Pom"
• "Hippopotamus" (Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud)

Unreleased Songs

A number of songs didn't make it to disc or were released elsewhere. These include;

• "The Wompom" (released in the Bestiary of Flanders and Swann)
• "Grandma" (originally part of an extensive Seven Ages of Women from the revue Airs on a shoestring(1953)
• "In the Bath" (later reused in At the Drop of Another Hat)
• "The Warthog" (released in the Bestiary)
• "The Whale (Mopy Dick)" (released in the Bestiary)
• "The Elephant" (released in the Bestiary)
• "Miranda" (Swann's setting to a Greek poem about the Shakespearian character Miranda, precceds "to Kokoraki")
• "Down Below" (written by Sydney Carter/Swann)
• "The 100 Song" (part of the "Songs for our Time" set that never made it to disc, this started out as one of the "Bottom Five" for the revue "Fresh Airs" (1955). It was included out of context in the Extiary)
• "The Great New Motorway" (topical song, originally for the London Show but adopted for any city with unfinished building projects e. g. "The Great New Gardiner Expressway" when in Toronto, 1961, or "The Great New Sydney Opera House" when in Adelaide, 1964)
• "Good Literature" (written by Carter/Swann)
• "Say who you are" (Carter/Swann)
• "Topical Song (Harold Macmillan)" (following Eden's resignation over the Suez Crisis)
• "Sing a Song of Fivepence" (about decimalisation, sang in Australia)
• "Russia is Red, Dilly Dilly" (Sydney Carter, about space race)
• "Commonwealth Fair" (released in the "Extiary")
• "The Lord Chamerlain's Regulations" (A setting to three of the Lord Chamberlain's Regulations; Smoking is Permitted in the Auditorium, The Safety Curtain Must Be Raised and The Public May Leave at the End of Each Performance. Used as encores. Originally from the Revue "Fresh Airs" (1955))

References

1. ^ Information from the IanKitching website

• Information from the Flanders and Swann website
• "Oxford Companion to Popular Music" by Peter Grimmond - ISBN 0-19-280004-3
• "Guinness Who's Who of Stage Musicals" editor Colin Larkin - ISBN 0-85112-756-8
• Cover notes from London production recording - Angel Records 65042

External links

• At the Drop of a Hat at the Internet Broadway Database
• Information about the several productions
• The Guide to Musical Theatre - At the Drop of a Hat
• Allmusic review of the album

Flanders and Swann Performers Michael Flanders • Donald Swann Revues At the Drop of a Hat • At the Drop of Another Hat • Fresh Airs Songs "The Gnu" • "Slow Train" • "Have Some Madeira M'Dear"