First performance 8 December 1963 Composer Noël Coward Orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett | ||
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Similar Noël Coward plays, Musicals | ||
The Girl Who Came to Supper is a musical with a book by Harry Kurnitz and music and lyrics by Noël Coward, based on Terence Rattigan's 1953 play The Sleeping Prince. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1963.
Contents
Plot
The story is set in 1911 London at the time of George V's coronation. American-born chorus girl Mary Morgan becomes involved with Balkan archduke Charles, the widowed Prince Regent of Carpathia, after he sees a performance of her West End musical The Coconut Girl. She soon becomes involved with the actions of his teenaged son, King Nicholas, as well as the Queen Mother. A peripheral character, fish-and-chips peddler Ada Cockle, appears to be present solely to entertain the audience with a rousing fifteen-minute rendition of traditional Cockney tunes.
Production
Rattigan's play had been staged in London with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, on Broadway with Michael Redgrave and Barbara Bel Geddes, and filmed as The Prince and the Showgirl with Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, so its story was a fairly familiar one. The musical opened to rave reviews in Boston but was received less favorably by the critics in Toronto. During its Philadelphia run, President Kennedy was assassinated, necessitating the replacement of the opening number, "Long Live the King (If He Can)".
The musical opened on Broadway, directed and choreographed by Joe Layton, on December 8, 1963 at The Broadway Theatre, where it ran for 112 performances and four previews. The cast featured Florence Henderson as Mary, José Ferrer as Charles, Irene Browne as the Queen Mother, Sean Scully as Nicholas, Tessie O'Shea as Ada Cockle, and Roderick Cook as Peter Northbrook.
Henderson and O'Shea were singled out for praise by the critics — the former for her one-woman delivery of an abridged version of The Coconut Girl, the latter for her extended song-and-dance routine. The review by the influential critic Walter Kerr in the Herald Tribune was mostly negative. He and others felt the show was an unsuccessful attempt to duplicate the success of the earlier My Fair Lady.
O'Shea won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Nominations went to Coward and Kurnitz for Best Author of a Musical and Irene Sharaff for Best Costume Design.
The show proved to be the last with a Coward score and the only one of his musicals never produced in London.
An original cast recording was released on the Sony label. (Sony Broadway SK 48210).
Songs
1Act 1: Intro / Carpathian National Anthem / My Family Tree
2Act 1: I've Been Invited to a Party
3Act 1: When Foreign Princes Come to Visit Us