I HAVE BEEN interested by the reception given to the
new English musical, Wild Thyme. In general it has been hostile. I think there are two reasons for this. In the first place, it strikes me as rather odd that music critics as well as dramatic critics do not go to musicals. Mr. Donald Swann's music in Wild Thyme is a good deal less obvious than most popular music. It has, in at least two newspapers, been condemned as 'tink- ling.' This, I suspect, is because these two critics cannot listen to music. Mr. Swami's tunes are superficially just 'catchy' airs, but they are, at a more serious level, extremely difficult to get hold of. I saw Wild Thyme in the company of a student of popular music, and her observation, which I have since heard upheld, was that the tunes would have been acceptable in the old days, when sophistication was permissible, but that nowa- days the teenagers and the critics who write for them find themselves hard put to it to get beyond Oklahoma! The second thing which interests me is that the English musical is trying strenuously to re-establish itself as something which earns the rather damning adjectives 'charming' and 'fresh.' Even Mr. Ronald Searle's decor, in spite of its humour, falls into this category. But the English musical in its heyday made quite sure of leavening charm and freshness with some native wit and irony: The American musical has clearly passed its post- war peak, and the way is open for the librettist and composer who can combine in producing a bit of England other than Devonshire clotted cream with, if you are lucky, Dorset wild strawberries.
I HAVE been shown a communication from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders to say that the London Motor Show at Earls Court will be opened on October 19 by Lord Mountbatten. A postscript entitled 'Notes to the Press' makes it perfectly clear that Admiral Earl Mountbatten's full designa- tion is : Admiral the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, PC, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, GCB, DSO, ADC, DCL, LID, DSc, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff. I have every sympathy with the desire of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (if it is in fact their desire) that nobody should make any mis- take about who a (practically anonymous) 'Lord Mountbatten' really is. Reference to Who's Who, however, reveals that he could be defined even more clearly by the letters AMIEE, AMINA, to which he is entitled. Why this reticence? * *
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