The Girl Who Came to Supper Totally Explained

Everything about The Girl Who Came To Supper totally explained

The Girl Who Came to Supper is a musical with a book by Harry Kurnitz and music and lyrics by Noël Coward.
   Based on Terrence Rattigan's 1953 play The Sleeping Prince, it's set in 1911 London at the time of George V's coronation. American-born chorus girl Mary Morgan becomes involved with not only Balkan archduke Charles, the Prince Regent of Carpathia, after he sees a performance of her West End musical The Coconut Girl, but his teenaged son Nicholas and the Queen Mother, as well. A peripheral character, fish-and-chips peddler Ada Cockle, appears to be present solely to entertain the audience with a rousing fifteen-minute rendition of traditional Cockney tunes.
   Rattigan's play had been staged in London with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, on Broadway with Michael Redgrave and Barbara Bel Geddes, and filmed as The Prince and the Showgirl with Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, so its story was a fairly familiar one. The musical opened to rave reviews in Boston but was received less favorably by the critics in Toronto. Durings its Philadelphia run, President Kennedy was assassinated, necessitating the opening number, "Long Live the King (If He Can)," to be replaced. Theatregoers no doubt were still in a somber move when the show moved to New York City.
   After four previews, the Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Joe Layton, opened on December 8 1963 at The Broadway Theatre, where it ran for 112 performances. The cast included Florence Henderson as Mary, José Ferrer as Charles, Irene Browne as the Queen Mother, Sean Scully as Nicholas, and Tessie O'Shea as Ada Cockle.
   Henderson and O'Shea were singled out for praise by the critics - the former for her one-woman delivery of an abridged version of The Coconut Girl, the latter for her extended song-and-dance routine - but the highly influential Walter Kerr's review was negative for the most part. He and others felt the show was an unsuccessful attempt to duplicate the success of the earlier My Fair Lady.
   O'Shea won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Nominations went to Coward and Kurnitz for Best Author of a Musical and Irene Sharaff for Best Costume Design.
   The show proved to be the last with a Coward score and the only one of his musicals never produced in London.
   An original cast recording is available on the Sony label.

Song list

Act I

Swing Song
Yasni Kozkolai (Carpathian National Anthem)
My Family Tree
I've Been Invited to a Party
Waltz
I've Been Invited to a Party (Reprise)
When Foreign Princes Come to Visit Us
Sir or Ma'am
Soliloquies
Lonely
London is a Little Bit of All Right
What Ho, Mrs. Brisket
Don't Take Our Charlie for the Army
Saturday Night at the Rose and Crown
London Is a Little Bit of All Right (Reprise)
Here and Now
I've Been Invited to a Party (Reprise)
Soliloquies (Reprise)
Act II
Coronation Chorale
How Do You Do, Middle Age?
Here and Now (Reprise)
The Stingaree
Curt, Clear and Concise
Tango
Welcome to Pootzie Van Doyle
The Coconut Girl
Paddy MacNeill and His Automobile
Swing Song (Reprise)
Six Lillies of the Valley
The Walla Walla Boola
This Time It's True Love
I'll Remember Her

Further Information

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