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including Stephen Ward, Aldwych Theatre, review
Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical about the Profumo affair has delightful tunes, winning performances – and an unexpected dash of mischief, says Charles Spencer
In full swing: the cast of Stephen Ward Photo: Nobby Clark
12:01AM GMT 20 Dec 2013
Since he parted company with Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals have hardly been famous for their wit. They have been yearningly romantic, certainly, and often darkly gothic, but in the immortal words of Cilla Black, there haven’t been a lorra laffs.
So his new musical about the Profumo affair comes as a delightful surprise.
Yes, it is indignant at times, suggesting that Stephen Ward was set up as a “human sacrifice” when the scandal put the skids under Macmillan’s Government, and it is a show that may well play a part in the current campaign to quash the society osteopath’s trumped up conviction for living on immoral earnings.
But there is also a sense of mischief about the piece, that finds this sometimes po-faced composer coming up with numbers in a rich variety of styles, so that the familiar yearning anthems are interspersed with songs of wit and fun. Several of the tunes are instantly catchy too.
The best of these is You’ve Never Had It So Good, in which Christopher Hampton and Don Black – jointly responsible for the show’s book and lyrics – conflate Harold Macmillan’s famous line about the nation’s prosperity with Private Eye’s wicked take on it when the Profumo affair erupted: You’ve Never Had It So Often.
