Du Barry Was A Lady (2001 Production)
Louise Gold
starred as May Daly/Mme Du Barry, for the second time in a Lost Musicals
production of Du Barry Was A Lady, at Her Majesty’s Theatre, on 18th
and 25th November 2001, this production was broadcast on BBC Radio 3
at 14:00 on 27th December 2001. She had played the part eight years
earlier at The Barbican Centre in a Previous
Lost Musicals production. This page is about her later performance.
Louise was not
the only player in the show who had been in the earlier production. James
Vaughan had played Charlie/The Dauphin in the that same earlier production
Cast
Jones/Le Du De
Reporter - Mark Siney
Kelly - Chris Vincent
Harry/Capt. of the Guard - Gavin Lee
Alice/Alisande De Vernay - Lauren Ward
Man In Toilet/Florian/Zamore - Jeremy David
Louis Blore/King of France - Desmond Barrit
Vi Hennessy/La Duchess - Gabriella Santinelli
May Daly/Mme. Du Barry - Louise Gold
Alex Barton - Mark McKerracher
Charley/ The Dauphin - James Vaughan
Nurse To King - Shula Keyte
Gatekeeper - Stephen Llyod-Morgan
Doctor - Mark Siney
Mme La Duchesse Du Coeur Flottantes - Jenna Sokolowski
Come On In - Dancer - Hannah Berry
Come On In - Dancer - Tanya Robb
Production Team
Music/Lyrics
- Cole Porter
Book - Herbert Fields and Buddy G De Sylva
Original Production – 6 December 1939,
Orchestra - BBC Concert Orchestra
Musical Director - Mark Warman
Director - Ian Marshall-Fisher
For a full account/review please click here.
As with
the previous year’s production of One
Touch Of Venus, Louise Gold used her holiday time from Mamma Mia to do the Lost Musicals. Which is presumably
also why she was not with the Mamma Mia cast when they appeared
on Children In Need.
By complete
coincidence, some 60 years earlier, the original
But In
The Morning No suffered some
problems when it was first written, due to its rather (for the time) dirty
lyrics, for many yeas it could not be sung on air, and The Lord Chamberlain
was particularly concerned with this song when the show originally played
London. This may explain why there are so many variations of this song. For
this production lyrics used were, according to The Complete Lyrics Of
Cole Porter: the opening verse, and refrains 3, 7 and 8, namely the
ones that begin “Are you fond of swimming, dear?”, “Are you good at figures, dear?”, and,
“Are you in the market, dear?”.
Friendship is also a song that has undergone several
variations. For this production all the lyrics given in The Complete Lyrics
Of Cole Porter were used, including the often unused Refrain 2 (the one
that begins “If you ever loose your way, come to May”). In this
production they sang the original opening line to Refrain 6 “If they hang
you, pard, send a card” rather than its more often used replacement “If
you ever crack your spine trussle mine”. For more details on this see Anything Goes
(Stage).
It has been said that King Louis XIV of France
(The Dauphan) may have been left-handed. If that is the case, then it is
perhaps particularly apt that in this production he was played by James
Vaughan, who is left-handed.
Louise Gold is one of the few actresses to have played all
five Ethel Merman roles in the quintet of musicals that Cole Porter
wrote for Ethel Merman, having appeared in a revival of Anything Goes, and in Lost Musicals
earlier concert staging of Du Barry Was A
Lady at The Barbican, as well as their Barbican productions of: Red Hot & Blue, Something For The Boys, Panama Hattie.
Louise Gold
and James Vaughan are long
standing Lost Musicals performers, having previously appeared in:
One Touch Of Venus (1992 Production),
Du Barry Was A Lady (1993 Production),
Of Thee I Sing (where their
performances were a complete contrast to those in this show), Panama Hattie, and were perhaps best teamed in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. They have
also appeared in the film Crush. James Vaughan also helped out on the film Muppet Treasure Island on which Louise Gold puppeteered.
Louise
Gold, James Vaughan, Stewart Permutt and Jeremy David all previously appeared in Panama Hattie.
Stewart
Permutt had also previously
appeared with Louise Gold in: Something
For The Boys and Oh Kay. They went on to appear
together in Mexican Hayride.
Jeremy
David had also previously
appeared with Louise Gold in: New Girl In
Town.
Mark
McKerracher had previously
appeared with Louise Gold in 110 In The
Shade.
The BBC
Concert Orchestra had previously
played for Sondheim At The Barbican
The BBC
Concert Orchestra had previously
played for Let ‘Em Eat Cake which was also
broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Louise Gold has appeared in quite a number of Cole Porter musicals, besides the Ethel Merman quintet of shows, she has also appeared in Kiss Me Kate, Noel/Cole: Let’s Do It, and, Mexican Hayride. However, she has made all too few recordings, the only albums of her singing Cole Porter are Noel/Cole: Let’s Do It (Recording), and the JAY/TER’s studio cast album of Anything Goes (recording) - Website Recommended Album.
Louise Gold and Desmond Barrit went on to appear at Chichester in Final Chic Cabaret 2003 , together in Curtain Up and to co-host Chichester’s Christmas Concerts 2003. They also went on to appear together in Flaunt It 2008.
Gavin Lee, Louise Gold, and, Tanya Robb have gone on to appear together in Mary Poppins.
Mark Warman played the piano (when Louise Gold returned to the Lost Musicals nine years later) in Darling of The Day.
In the show one of Mme Du Barry’s lines is “I don’t care what they say about me, so long as they spell my name right.” On the 29 November 2001, The Camden New Journal did a feature about Ian Marshall-Fisher’s Lost Musicals, focusing on his recent productions of Let’s Face It and Du Barry Was A Lady. The feature was illustrated by a photograph with the caption sic “Louse Gold and Desmond Barrit in Cole Porter’s Duberry was a Lady”.
Critics Comments
“...Du Barry Was A Lady, a 1939 rarity in which Bert Lahr and Ethel
Merman raised the roof with their great song Friendship. Desmond Barrit and
Louise Gold do much the same, though hampered by scripts and polite evening
dress..... Miss Gold has two feisty comic numbers.”
“Louise Gold and Desmond
Barrit are on glorious form in the main roles, and Lauren Ward and Gavin Lee,
among others, lend sparkling support.” John Gross, THE TELEGRAPH, 27
November 2001
“In the Ethel Merman
part in this concert performance, Louise Gold nods to her predecessor without
bowing to her. With a big, warm voice and a majestically playful manner, Gold
-- you'd call her Junoesque except Juno never had any fun -- is more womanly
than Merman but, like her, puts the hot numbers across by being joyous and
powerful rather than sexy. One would call it a triumph of confidence if one
spoke of a confident tank”. Rhoda Koenig, The INDEPENDENT, 22 November
2001
“If 90 per cent of the job of a director is sometimes
said to be done in the casting, then Marshall-Fisher is 100 per cent
successful. In her tenth Lost Musical appearance, Louise Gold once again takes
on a role originally played by Ethel Merman and, as her predecessor did,
completely owns the stage. Combining sass, attack and lyrical grace, she has
become one of our most formidable leading ladies.” Mark Shenton, THE
STAGE, 22 November 2001.
“ Louise Gold, once
more cast in a Merman role, does splendidly by ‘Katie Went To
Links about Du Barry Was A Lady
The Lost
Musicals Charitable TrustTM: http://www.lostmusicals.org/ -. The site includes photographs
from a number of past productions, including one of Desmond Barritt and Louise
Gold in DuBarry Was A Lady (2001 Production).
TheatreChannel.com
page about the show, includes a photograph of the principals: http://www.theatrechannel.com/DuBarry.htm
Review from
The Independent, by Rhoda Koenig: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/theatre/reviews/story.jsp?story=106068 or: http://arts.independent.co.uk/theatre/reviews/article145183.ece
Mini-Review
from The Telegraph, by John Gross:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/01/11/27/theatre.html
also on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/4180024/A-Room-of-Ones-Own-Umoja-F-ing-Games-Dubarry-Was-a-Lady.html
Page about the
original stage production of Du Barry Was A Lady, from The Cole
Porter Reference Guide: http://www.geocities.com/porterguide/dubarry.html
This IS
British Theatre Guide (actually a piece about the Lost Musicals’ 2008
season, however it happens to be illustrated with a very nice picture of Louise
Gold and company in this production of Du Barry Was A Lady): http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/news/lostmusicals08.htm
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