The Theater: Big Ben Strikes

It was a great day in the evening. In Manchester’s hangar-sized Opera House, jammed from gates to gods, the customers cheered & cheered, the curtain rose & fell, the cast bowed & bowed. It was a triply ripping occasion: 1) the opening of Britain’s first big postwar musical, Big Ben; 2) the 125th production by Britain’s Flo Ziegfeld, aging (73), arthritic Charles Blake Cochran; 3) a show written by a Member of Parliament—bung-nosed Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, famed as a humorous writer (“A.P.H.”) and as a pillar of the pub.

The show, bright and British as a redcoat, rose to the occasion. It was a political parable about two youngsters (Soprano Carole Lynn and Tenor Eric Palmer) who get themselves elected to Parliament on an All Party ticket. Forthwith they foil the villainess, Mrs. Alderman Busy (Joan Young), a battle-ax burlesque of Lady Astor. With the aid of Big Ben the barge-master (David Davies), they abduct her from the floor of the House of Commons while she is proposing Prohibition. And after much pother and porridge, all factions unite in a flag-waving finale (“Big Ben! Big Ben! . . . Chime out again and tell all men that England’s England still!”).*

Sales Talk. Of the tunes, two were tagged as likely hits: / Want to See the People Happy, the schmalzy theme song, and Let Us Go Down to the River, which was probably best described as a political love song. Of the girls, supercharged Gabrielle Brune (as a right young lady gone Left) was the surest showstopper, with her throaty male call: “Come to Britain! Our exports are three: racehorses, whiskey and women like me… .”*

A.P.H. was never better. His satiric jingles had a near-Gilbertian nip & skip. After his first jab, a hilarious hymn to The Good Old Days (“The women wore a little more and beer was alcoholic”), he quickly took a swipe at Socialism: We love our country but we hate The swollen octopus, the State That fills our stomachs well enough But robs the soul of precious stuff… .*

A Wit’s Progress. The sly dog who wrote this smooth doggerel says of himself: “I live a hideous life, and very often shave after lunch. I have four children and one wife. The fourth (a manchild) is extraordinarily handsome and good. All the other children are female and very high-minded.”

He might also have said that he is 55, the son of a civil servant, an Oxford graduate (in jurisprudence), an ingrained reformer, a wonder at skittles, author of novels, plays, verse and broadsides, Britain’s reigning wit, a Punch contributor since 1910, and since 1935 an Independent M.P. from Oxford.

In Parliament, when not crusading for something, he crusades against crusaders. At his naughtiest, he has driven verbal splinters under Lady Astor’s fingernails,-or lit dialectical firecrackers under the earnest Left. At his nicest, he has tilted at sesquipedalian government reports (his parody: “It has been aquating hard. I am now going to dehydrate my socks”). At his sanest, he helped win the first marked mitigation of Britain’s stringent divorce laws since 1857.

Big Ben was signed A.P.H. with a flourish. If Manchester was any measure, Herbert would have one more bell to his jester’s cap when the show opened in London this summer.

*By permission of the copyright owner, Chappell & Co., Ltd. *An A.P.H. anecdote: Once, when Lady Astor scolded a crapulous and corpulent M.P. for “pouring that awful poison into your stomach,” he replied: “Madam, I have been drinking this stuff for many years, and I would be glad to put my stomach against yours any day.”