Those Glorious Salad Days
Salad Days by Dorothy Reynolds and Julian Slade
Norwich Theatre Royal, 1995
In the summer of 1954, the schedule of productions at the Bristol Old Vic included TS Eliot’s verse play Murder in the Cathedral and Graham Greene’s The Living Room. Worthy fare, perhaps, but not a lot of laughs in either of them. The manager of the company, Denis Carey, had always been a keen advocate of music in the theatre, and he now decided the time was right to stage something more musically ambitious than anything he had tried hitherto. A contrast, he thought. Something light and frothy to fill the bill for the first three weeks of June. However, the show in prospect should not overtax the company’s singing and dancing talents, which were limited.
It so happened that the ‘unofficial composer in residence’ at the Theatre Royal was Julian Slade, who had already proved his ability to write happy, catchy numbers with his scores for Sheridan’s The Duenna and the seasonal shows Christmas in King Street and The Merry Gentleman. With Carey’s encouragement, Slade sat down once again with Dorothy Reynolds, his collaborator from those early musicals, and the result was Salad Days – a perfect piece of summer frivolity.
Each of the parts was carefully tailored to fit its interpreter. The only member of the company with any real singing ability was Eleanor Drew, so she was given the leading role of Jane who sings the bulk of the straight ballads. Another prominent company member, Bob Harris, possessed considerable mime talents, so the role of Troppo the mute helper was written for him. But the rest of the cast were able to display a fair degree of versatility as well, and the twelve players found it easy to slip in and out of the numerous characterisations required of them. As the format of the show was effectively a series of revue sketches, each individual had moments in the spotlight.
There were no further plans for it at all. As a concept, Salad Days had been designed to fill a specific gap in the schedule, cheer everybody up, and still leave the company with enough energy and vocal power to survive the rest of the season. The production was received with unalloyed delight. Simply staged, with an accompaniment of just two pianos and a set of drums in the orchestra pit, its mood was bright and sunny and perfectly suited to a summer evening’s entertainment. Best of all, it had a plethora of lovely songs with easy lyrics which proved to be not only very singable but instantly memorable even after one hearing.
The cast enjoyed it almost as much as the audiences. By the middle of the second week, Eric Porter, who was playing the role of the Uncle in Diplomacy, decided that it would be a great pity if Salad Days were to vanish after just the three weeks it was planned for. He therefore launched a publicity campaign backstage, urging every member of the cast and crew to spread the word among their West End contacts. He hoped that someone influential would come and see the show, and become sufficiently enthusiastic to guarantee its transfer to London.
His canvassing worked, and the London managements duly arrived to find out what all the fuss was about. Big city reactions to the provincial show were, predictably, mixed. Some said that certain things – like the cast – would need to be changed before it stood any chance of success in the West End. Others, though, saw its potential more clearly. Michael Codron was sent to review it by his then employer Jack Hylton, and he returned a very favourable report. Linnit and Dunfee also loved the show and believed it had the potential to thrive with the original cast intact. The two managements got together, combined their resources, and Salad Days opened at the Vaudeville Theatre in August 1954 with the Bristol cast virtually unchanged.
The London audience lapped it up, and for once even the critics agreed. The following review from The Stage was typical: “Mr Slade’s music is fresh and exhilarating as a spring morning. It shines with purity of expression and never falters in power to captivate with its tunefulness and wit… Salad Days is as near to a perfect production as one may reasonably expect.”
The national papers were also highly complimentary. The Observer recorded that the show had received a “rapturous reception” and went on to say: “The warmth of the welcome indicates there is a growing distaste for hysterical ‘dicers’ and screaming discords. Mr Slade’s score here as in The Duenna shows that tunes we learned at Granny’s knee are now the favoured model… It has a kind of jovial innocence and absence of the cynical and the ‘blue’ which separate it from the smart sketch writing of the usual ‘intimate’ revue.”
The Times credited Salad Days with starting a new vogue for the “return to nature” and the critic decided that the show was “a musical frolic frankly taking its inspiration from the undergraduate stage”. It was no doubt this combination of youthful high spirits, revue and fantasy which contributed to Salad Days’ success. It stayed at the Vaudeville Theatre for five and a half years and played for 2,288 performances.
[For an interview with Julian Slade, click here]
Julian Slade