Fab flavour of Green Shield stamps and Lyon's Maid lollies
Rock is dead. Long live the theatrical musical.
I had a most pleasant evening last Saturday in the comfortably plush arms of the Alexandra Theatre. I was there to see Shout, a new musical with songs from the decade we now call the Swinging Sixties, named after our habit of hanging people.
Life was different then, more than 40 years ago. Women couldn't vote for toffee, our rivers had blood in them and the mobile phone hadn't been invented.
To get our kicks, particularly after the gallows and stocks had been removed from our idyllic village greens, we'd put on Alaistair Sim wigs and dance the hula hoop dance in village halls. Working class people, still reeling from the Second World War, had never seen a banana.
This was pre-decimalisation, a time when the coin of the realm was Green Shield Stamps and cigarette coupons. The whole family used to smoke Capstans when we needed a new pair of shoes. Free sex on the NHS was barely a notion, the famous contraception pill was still being trialled on Japanese prisoners of war at Belmarsh.
Rather than dreaming of all our teeth falling out or turning up for a job interview naked, we would dream about Malcolm Muggeridge eating our children. We were skint, grey-skinned, sexually-frustrated and sick of powdered egg. But we were happy.
Now, thanks to the magic of theatre, we are able to relive those days. The songs. The fashions. The arcane slang. The dances. The politics.
In Shout, three young poppets arrive in London with ambition in their hearts. One wants to be an actor, the other a singer. The third, played as if she was born to the role by Claire Sweeney, was a Liverpudlian slapper determined to bonk every bloke in the Big Smoke. They meet the auntie of one of them, a simple hairdresser played by Su Pollard, and launch themselves on the city of dreams. Along the way, they get jobs, lose jobs, get blokes, lose blokes and completely miss the phenomenon of the Beatles. One of them gets in the family way, another marries a gay man by accident and Ms Sweeney's knickers are up and down like a fiddler's elbow.
They all achieve their dreams by the end, of course, except for Su Pollard who's still in the hair-dressing trade rather than working in a seaside holiday camp, a job to which she seems ideal. So, a flimsy plot you will agree. Fret not; it's the music that holds it all together.
With tunes from Dusty, Cilla and Lulu, Shout is a rip-roaring, thigh-slapping romp from start to finish. It's almost like these songs document the decade.
When Petula Clark sang Don't Sleep In The Subway, thousands of war-stressed fire wardens left their underground shelters and walked in to the bright new egalitarian dawn of Harold MacMillan's You've Never Had It So Good old days.
Petula Clark, a child star and one of the original Addams Family, also invented segregation of classes in the smash hit Down Town. Idealistic teenagers who followed her directions found themselve in glum slums with no public transport and rubbish shops which sold rusty Slinkies and melted Lyon's Maid lollies.
Anyone Who Had A Heart, in those far-away days, was pursued by mad-eyed Christian Barnard on the orders of Dusty Springfield, the iconic actress from the Hammer films. Most women in the Swinging Sixties were lovely. They knew their place as nest-builders, knitters and cooks.
Food came in tins, apart from powdered egg, and they coped quite adequately on a modest stipend for the Bettaware catalogue.
As long as there was a good song on the radio, women would generally do as they were told by their husband. While he was at the office, she would keep the house spick and span, have the pie on the table and make sure his underpants were ironed.
Seems strange now doesn't it? This was a long time before the so-called femme-messiah, Jo Brand, descended to earth to forever scorch the fabric of patriarchal society with scathing nob jokes and a withering stare.
It was Dusty's I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself, a plaintive lament about the boredom that can follow a good horse brass polishing session, that became an unofficial anthem for every work-shy fop in England.
Shout was history brought to life in thrilling new ways, a glimpse into all our yesterdays. In 40 years time, they'll be showing the Arctic Monkeys musical at the Alex. Don't miss it.
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