CDs: Some of Us Belong to the Stars
Like My Sister Eileen and Auntie Mame, Billy Liar is one of those properties that has succeeded in multiple incarnations. The story of a young undertaker's assistant who escapes his dreary Yorkshire existence through elaborate daydreams, Billy Liar was first a 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse. The following year, it became a well-received West End play by Waterhouse and Willis Hall, originally starring Albert Finney, who was succeeded by Tom Courtenay.
In 1963, that play was made into the English film Billy Liar, directed by John Schlesinger, written by Waterhouse and Hall, and co-starring Courtenay and newcomer Julie Christie. Ten years later, there was a U.K. television series of Billy Liar, starring Jeff Rawle and consisting of twenty-five half-hour episodes. In 1975, Waterhouse published a sequel novel, Billy Liar on the Moon.
In between the TV series and the sequel book, Billy Liar became Billy, an elaborate West End musical that opened at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane where The Producers is now playing on May 1, 1974. This is not to be confused with the Broadway musical Billy, based on Herman Melville's Billy Budd, which ran one performance in 1969. Ian La Fresnais and Dick Clement based their libretto for Billy on the Waterhouse-Hall play.
The lyrics were by Don Black Bombay Dreams, Dracula, Aspects of Love, Song and Dance, Sunset Boulevard, the music by John Barry, who had already composed the scores for the London musical Passion Flower Hotel and the American road-closer Lolita, My Love. Barry was the winner of several Oscars for his work in films; he and Black had collaborated on the Academy Award-winning song "Born Free" and on the title song for Thunderball, one of several James Bond films Barry scored. In 1982, Barry and Black would reunite to write the score for one more musical, Broadway's The Little Prince and the Aviator, which closed in previews.
Billy was a brassy, Broadway-style musical, and it took advantage of the services of top-notch American choreographer Onna White. But its trump card was its star, Michael Crawford, who had done the film versions of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Hello, Dolly! but was making his musical stage debut. At the time of Billy, Crawford was a household name owing to his role on a recent BBC TV comedy series, "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em."
Following the opening night of Billy, The Daily Mail wrote, "There is no magic quite like being right there when a star is born," and that was typical of the raves Crawford received. But his vehicle was equally acclaimed: The Daily Express called Billy "the most successful British musical since Oliver!," while The Sunday People called it "the brightest British musical for years...it's going to hoist brilliant Michael Crawford into the ranks of the superstars."
The success of Billy was a striking achievement for the time. While Andrew Lloyd Webber was already on the scene with Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph..., those were new-style, through-sung pieces. Most conventional British musicals of the time were short-lived, sometimes charming mediocrities, and Billy was the rare home-grown show to win strong acclaim.
Some felt that Billy Liar had found its happiest form as a musical, and that's because Billy's active fantasy life, which revolves around his own private kingdom called Ambrosia, was embodied in dream sequences that became production numbers, not unlike the way protagonists' dreams were embodied in the musicals Lady in the Dark or The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In the number "Aren't You Billy Fisher?," Billy was transformed into a Fred Astaire-style song-and-dance star from Hollywood. Later, Billy dreams he's a pop teen idol as he leads the number "The Lady from L.A."
Notable among the featured players was a young actress with a big voice who had already toiled in the London productions of Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair, and Grease. Playing one of the women to whom Billy is engaged, the hard-boiled Rita, was Elaine Paige, who would get her big break four years later with Evita.
Billy played 904 performances, a very healthy run considering the vast size of the theatre. It probably would have run even longer had not Crawford been replaced for the latter part of the run by Roy Castle. Given the fact that Billy was big and had the feel of Broadway about it, some thought must have been given to taking the show to New York. But perhaps it was felt that the material was too innately English, and that the property had never been as well-known in the U.S. as it was at home. In 1976, the musical Billy had its German-language premiere at Vienna's Theater an der Wien. In 1991, a major stage revival starring Jonathon Morris El Gallo in the film of The Fantasticks was advertised but fell apart prior to rehearsal.
CBS's London cast recording of Billy was briefly available on a Sony West End CD that quickly disappeared. With Crawford back on the London musical stage in The Woman in White, Billy is now back on CD, this time on the Sony Music label.
The best number is Crawford's first solo, the song of a dreamer, "Some of Us Belong to the Stars." There's a strong duet for two of Billy's girlfriends, a soprano Gay Soper and a belter Paige, both awaiting the man they believe to be their fiance. It's called "Any Minute Now," and it allows Paige to display the enormous voice that would soon make her a star.
Paige is also heard in the pretty title trio, which adds another of Billy's ladies to the mix. A production number, "Happy to Be Themselves," has Billy's friend explaining to the hero that some folk are content with their commonplace existence. When Billy thinks he may be able to escape his drab surroundings, he has the bright "Is This Where I Wake Up?"
Listeners will note that Crawford was still singing in the light, small, pleasant voice he used before pumping it up for Phantom. Billy doesn't possess one of the better London scores, and probably falls into the mediocre-but-pleasant category. But as Crawford's first musical, it's worth hearing.