On with the Dance (musical)

On with the Dance is a 1925 musical revue produced by C. B. Cochran, written and composed by Noël Coward and Philip Braham. Coward wrote his songs while he was acting in his first stage hit, The Vortex. 1925 was a busy year for Coward, in which he produced three other plays in London: Hay Fever, Fallen Angels and Easy Virtue.

The show opened at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, England, on 17 March 1925 and transferred to the London Pavilion, where it ran for 229 performances.[1][2] It is best remembered for Alice Delysia's singing "Poor Little Rich Girl". Cochran wanted to cut the piece and had to be dissuaded by Coward. As well as Delysia, the cast included Hermione Baddeley, Ernest Thesiger, Nigel Bruce and Douglas Byng.[1] On opening night, Coward was not yet the famous name he would be by the end of the year: The Manchester Guardian review mentioned him only once, and The Times review did not mention him at all.[1][2]

Songs

(In the order listed in The Lyrics of Noël Coward, pp. 19–30):

The Noël Coward Society, drawing on performing statistics from the publishers and the Performing Rights Society, ranks "Poor little rich girl" among Coward's ten most popular songs.[3] The show also features four ballets, not by Coward. One of them, based on William Hogarth's The Rake’s Progress, was composed by Roger Quilter and choreographed by Leonid Massine.[1]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 The Manchester Guardian, 18 March 1925, p. 11 "Great Showmanship"
  2. 1 2 The Times, 1 May 1925, p. 12 "On With The Dance."
  3. ↑ "Appendix 3 (The Relative Popularity of Coward's Works)", Noël Coward Music Index, accessed 9 March 2009

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, September 05, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.