British Theatre in the 1950s was a strange harmony of contrasts. Writers of the calibre of John Osborne and Harold Pinter were bringing a new era of realism to the stage with such plays as Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Pinter’s The Birthday Party, while at the same time the very different but equally noteworthy talents of newcomers Sandy Wilson and Julian Slade were providing a welcome continuation of the long-established tradition of light English frothy musical comedies, à la Novello and Coward, which concentrated on entertainment without any attempt at enlightenment. Wilson and Slade were more or less contemporaries, Wilson having been born in 1924 and Slade in 1930.  Each got his first experience of writing and acting at university, Wilson writing for and appearing in revues, and Slade writing undergraduate musicals and acting in Shakespeare. Thereafter, their respective careers took divergent directions, but in each case, their growth as writers eventually resulted in their names being in lights in the West End as authors of the hit musicals that are featured in these recordings.

  While this Original Cast recording of The Boy Friend features the two-pianos-plus-rhythm accompaniment used in the theatre, The London Orchestra provides its own overture to this reissue, with full, rich orchestral versions of five of the best-known songs from the score. Then Anne Rogers, Denise Hirst and Anthony Hayes lead the listener through a glorious wallow in 1920s nostalgia as the story of Polly Browne and her friends at finishing school in the south of France unfolds, and true love conquers all in the end. There’s not a dull song in the entire score, but perhaps the best-known are I Could Be Happy With You, It’s Never Too Late To Fall In Love, Fancy Forgetting, A Room In Bloomsbury, and the title song. Stan Edwards leads the accompaniment from the piano, with an unnamed pianist and drummer in support.

 The twelve songs from ’Salad Days’ that are heard here, both in their original form as performed by a talented cast that includes Eleanor Drew, John Warner, James Cairncross, Michael Meacham and Christine Finn, with pianists Edward Rubach and Robert Docker, and in his own two-piano versions with (probably) Arthur Sanford and an unnamed drummer. Common to both sets of performances are five of the most memorable songs from the show: We’re Looking For A Piano, I Sit In The Sun, Oh, Look At Me, It’s Easy To Sing, The Time Of My Life and We Said We Wouldn’t Look Back.