Production Background
Norman initially wrote the piece as a play (with no music), but after Joan Littlewood read it, she asked Bart to write the music and lyrics. It was first produced and directed by Littlewood in February 1959, at her Theatre Workshop, based in the Theatre Royal Stratford East. It subsequently played at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End, starting on 11 February 1960. It ran for 886 performances. The cast featured Maurice Kaufmann, Wallas Eaton, Miriam Karlin, Barbara Windsor, Toni Palmer and Bryan Pringle.
It was a Cockney comedy and the dialogue is in the Cockney dialect with much rhyming slang and thieves' cant. Some audiences found it difficult to understand, and a list of more than a dozen phrases with standard English translations was supplied in the programme.
The characters in the play were a selection of the low-life of London; a collection of gamblers, spivs, prostitutes, Teddy boys & girls and some not-too-honest police. The title song, "Fings ain't wot they used t'be", was memorable and was recorded by Max Bygraves,albeit with heavily bowdlerised lyrics. An original cast recording was made, and has recently been re-released on Hallmark Records (710032).
Reviews were mixed: "A few reviewers praised the production on the whole but found the script too thin, while others found it entertaining but not as good as the company's previous productions." The play won the Evening Standard Award for best musical (1960).
Read more about this topic: Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be
Famous quotes containing the words production and/or background:
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)