Valmouth is a 1958 musical by Sandy Wilson based on the novel of the same name by Ronald Firbank. [1]
It premiered in London at the Lyric Hammersmith, before transferring to the Saville Theatre. [2]
The production was directed by Vida Hope. [3] It made a star of Fenella Fielding as Lady Parvula de Panzoust. [4]
The musical has since been staged several times including twice at the Chichester Festival Theatre and several cast album recordings have been released. [5] [6] The musical has also been performed on BBC radio, first broadcast in 1975. [7] [8]
Plays and Players wrote "Sandy Wilson's lyrics include, by my reckoning, at least half a dozen potential hits beside 'Big Best Shoes'. Valmouth, in short, bewitches by its riches as the opening chorus swore it would." [1]
Dandy Nichols was an English actress best known for her role as Else Garnett, the long-suffering wife of the character Alf Garnett who was a parody of a working class Tory, in the BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part.
Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was an English actress of stage and screen. Her roles include Emma Peel in the TV series The Avengers (1965–1968); Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, wife of James Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969); Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013–2017); and the title role in Medea in the West End in 1993 followed by Broadway a year later.
Louise Gold is an English puppeteer, actress and singer. Her long career has included puppetry on television and roles in musical theatre in the West End, as well as other television, film and voice roles.
Fenella Fielding, OBE was an English stage, film and television actress who rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, and was often referred to as "England's first lady of the double entendre". She was known for her seductive image and distinctively husky voice. Fielding appeared in two Carry On films, Carry On Regardless (1961) and Carry On Screaming! (1966).
Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank was an innovative English novelist. His eight short novels, partly inspired by the London aesthetes of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, consist largely of dialogue, with references to religion, social-climbing, and sexuality.
Patricia Amy Rowlands was an English actress who is best remembered for her roles in the Carry On films series, as Betty Lewis in the ITV Thames sitcom Bless This House, and as Alice Meredith in the Yorkshire Television sitcom Hallelujah!.
Jonathon Morris is a former British actor and television presenter.
Sheila Susan White was an English film, television and stage actress.
Sir John Selby Clements, CBE was a British actor and producer who worked in theatre, television and film.
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Time and the Conways is a British play written by J. B. Priestley in 1937 illustrating J. W. Dunne's Theory of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of nineteen years from 1919 to 1937. Widely regarded as one of the best of Priestley's Time Plays, a series of pieces for theatre which played with different concepts of Time, it continues to be revived in the UK regularly.
Joanna McCallum is an English theatre, film and television actress.
Valmouth is a 1919 novel by British author Ronald Firbank. Valmouth is an imaginary English spa resort that attracts centenarians owing to its famed pure air. The town's name evokes actual seaside towns in the southwest peninsula of Britain, such as Falmouth, Dartmouth, Teignmouth, Exmouth and Weymouth.
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Vida Hope was a British stage and film actress, who also directed stage productions.
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Allison Harding is a musical and drama theatre actor, professional singer, musician, and writer/director from Hastings, Northern Ireland. Allison has performed in productions in theatres in the UK.