ON paper the story of playboy chiropractor Stephen Ward, caught in the eye of the Profumo storm, seems far more accessible than the locomotives, Argentine dictator’s wives, moggies and Old Testament stories that have forged the backbone of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most memorable hits.
Reunited with Christopher Hamton and Don Black, his new musical is an engaging period piece caught in 1963, when the world changed practically overnight from post-war grey to the psychedelic swinging Sixties.
Musically, This Side Of The Sun and He Sees Something In Me are traditional Lloyd Webber numbers; elsewhere pastiches of Beatnik and early reggae are in evidence on Super Duper Hula Hooper and Black Hearted Woman, while police corruption, spiced with the underbelly of Sixties tabloids, is outrageously portrayed in Give Us Something Juicy.
But the most memorable song is the daring and positively rude You’ve Never Had It So Good, You’ve Never Had It So Often, which would have Joseph’s brothers and Norma Desmond blushing with embarrassment.
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