Le monde des musicals

Fritzi is a stage-struck Parisian gamine, based in an old wine cellar, and running a troupe of boys, ostensibly earning a living by making cigarettes from discarded fag-ends, but supplementing their income by “collecting” things which are not their own. Fritzi is enamoured of the famous actor-manager André Sorbier of the Boite aux Joujoux. By chance, one of the things “collected” by the gang is a pie ordered by Sorbier, and when the actor and the pursuing gendarmerie track her down, she passes herself off as an impoverished baroness and wheedles her way into an audition. Once inside the theatre she manages to out-wit the leading lady, Paulette Leclaire, and get herself invited for supper at Sorbier’s private apartment. However, things go awry, and she runs away, back to the wine-cellar and the boys. In true musical comedy style, however, the smitten Sorbier comes after her and offers her marriage. Other characters in the story include Charles, a lively stage manager, Desirée, a rival actress, and Paul Duportal, a theatrical backer whose real trade is in ladies’ corsets.

Carl Tucker (the composer) was heavily promoted as being “from Vienna”, and the leading lady, Rosalinde Fuller, a well known classical actress, was promoted as having begun her career at the Folies Bergère. It was this mish-mash of musical styles that made the show heavy-going - dance sequences such as “South Sea Idyll” and a Valse Scena, acrobats and a mouth-organ speciality didn’t really fit alongside its romantic story. It ran its contracted month at the Adelphi and then transferred for a further six weeks at the Prince’s Theatre (Shaftesbury) - but never really caught on. (When Rosalinde Fuller died in 1982, aged 90, it was discovered that she had had an affair in 1920 with the author F.Scott Fitzgerald and was the inspiration for the chorus girl character in his novel “Head and Shoulders”)

I Love You
My Lord the Carriage Waits
A One Man Woman
It Had to Be You
Fluttering Round a Flame
And So let’s Go
Laugh All the Shadows Away
Come Under My Wing
Star Gazing.

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