New British musicals don’t grow on trees but an enchanting piece of musical theatre about a Queer romance and ambiguous sexual identity is even rarer.
Glenn Chandler ( book and lyrics) and Charles Miller ( music) had a soaraway success with their show The Pleasure Garden, which premiered at the now-closed Above The Stag Theatre in Vauxhall in late 2021.
The aptly named Tom Restless (Sam Baumal) is a smiley, optimistic gardener at the historic but declining Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and coincidentally originally on the site of the theatre. He falls head over heels in love with shipping clerk and erstwhile poet Ralph Pottinger ( Jay Worley) – a love that dare not speak its name as this is 1853. Chandler mixes up our interest with a conflicting bid for Tom’s affections from the lascivious Lord Lovelock. And more complications arrive with the introduction of the mysterious Princess Saura – who is not what “ she” seems and the equally ambiguous Capt Antrobus, whose apparent masculinty is also a facade.
John Yap of Jay Records is a master at re-creating original cast recordings and making new ones and his CD of The Pleasure Garden is no exception.
In its more than 20 tracks it perfectly captures the feel of Victorian times- blending folk ballads with music hall, Gilbert and Sullivan sound-alikes and even a nod to the rhymes and structures of Sondheim. But Charles Miller’s tunes are always melodious, and mostly joyful, often delivered with clear, light, effortless tones by the two principal Gay lovers. MD Aaron Clingham leads a small band that perfectly render the wide variety of musical genres.
Love Came A Walking My Way is a bright and jaunty romance, reminding me of that other great understated British musical Salad Days. The Loveliest Blossom On The Bough is the gardener’s horiculturally self-confident little love song to himself.
In contrast the predatory Lord Lovelock has a deliciously wrong in every way ode to sexual pleasures in Can a Man Help Being a Sod? It’s sung with dastardly relish by Rory-Charlie Campbell.
The minor characters of Princess Saura and Capt Antrobus explore their secret other identities and Benjamin Wong has a delightful song in Eastern Pleasures while Jennie Jacobs gives us a rousing patriotic recruitment anthem in Fight Fight Fight, with a false masculinity that is later to be unmasked. And the Princess and Capt wonderfully sum up their dilemnas in It’s Complicated.
There’s a great moment of comic embarrassment when Lady Lovelock tries to woo the Captain up aloft in a hot air balloon, and Why Not Capt Antrobus is a lovely little song where we know more than the singer (Ashleigh Harvey).
But this is no easy-way-out sugary tale. We are whisked to the front line in Crimea- there is death and injury and back home a public execution of the Princess.
As the show closes we get the melancholic When The Lights Go Off At Vauxhall – and how prescient that was, with the closure of the Above The Stag some months later.
At least this recording brings back memories to those of us privileged to go often to the venue and maybe when its lights go back on, we can get a Pleasure Garden encore.
The Pleasure Garden is on digital platforms and available from Jayrecords.com to order follow this link
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