By Steven Suskin BASHVILLE [CDJAY 1390]
Shaw's little-produced play was revived by the New Shakespeare Company at Regent's Park in 1982. Something about the enterprise cried out for songs, so Denis King (composer of Privates on Parade) and lyricist-librettist Benny Green were commissioned to make the adaptation. Bashville returned the following summer for a four-week run. What happened to the musical after Regent's Park is unknown to me. It appears to be available on the stock and amateur circuit, although I don't know that it has seen much in the way of productions. It's impossible to tell, solely from the CD, whether the show worked onstage; one supposes that if things had turned out well, the show would have had more of a future. At any event, Bashville makes an entertaining CD, and I'm glad to finally get to hear the score.
Cashel Byron is a pugilist, and also (it turns out) a gentleman. Bashville is a footman who loves the lady of the house. Byron gets the girl, Bashville becomes a boxer. (He does so, what's more, to a grand title song in the tradition of "Dolly" and "Mame.") There is also a Zulu king (which might in some ways have worked against future productions). At any rate, with catchy tunes like "One Pair of Hands," "A Gentleman's True to His Code," "Take the Road to the Ring" and the title song, the original cast album of Bashville is well worth the effort of tracking down. There are two pretty ballads as well, "Lydia" and "Because I Love Her." (The latter is very much tongue-in-cheek; "I black her boots," sings the lovelorn and outclassed valet, "because I love her.")
Now that we have Bashville, maybe someone will give us that earlier J.M. Barrie musical, Our Man Crichton. Surely, listeners would be interested in hearing Millicent Martin's Tweeny.
18 Sep 2005
Bashville, a British musicalization of Shaw's play The Admirable Bashville (from his novel, "Cashel Byron's Profession"), was produced for a month at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in August 1983. A cast album was made but with relatively little fanfare; while British cast albums tended to cross the Atlantic with regularity, Bashville passed me by at the time. The score has now been released on CD. Putting it on for a spin, I find that it is charmingly entertaining, lively (in a turn-of-the-century way) and stocked with cheerful tunes.
ON THE RECORD: Ethel Merman's "Balloon" and Bashville
—Steven Suskin, author of the forthcoming "Second Act Trouble" [Applause Books], "A Must See! Brilliant Broadway Artwork," the "Broadway Yearbook" series, "Show Tunes," and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached by e-mail at Ssuskin@aol.com.
