SIX decades ago, rock and roller Tommy Steele decided to turn his attention from Singing the Blues to the stage. Composer and lyricist David Heneker and Beverley Cross (book) were commissioned to write a “vehicle” show for him, and the HG Wells 1905 novel Kipps was chosen. In 1963 Tommy opened at the Cambridge Theatre as Arthur Kipps in Half a Sixpence, a role he played for 677 performances before transferring to Broadway.
Tommy was not only regarded as the original English teen idol but was the classic Cockney Cheeky Chappie, a familiar type in shows and films of the time. The show made him a star all over again with a new audience. The same overnight stardom came to Charlie Stemp in 2016 in the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Kipps – The New Half a Sixpence Musical. Producer Cameron Mackintosh had taken the original show, ditched the Beverly Cross book and commissioned a new one from Julian Fellowes and engaged George Stiles and Anthony Drewe (who worked with him on Mary Poppins) to adapt the original songs and create new musical material. The show opened at Chichester with newcomer Stemp coming in at very short notice to take over from the intended star Bryan Dick.
Since then the show has been seen in the West End, on Broadway and on film – each time with Stemp in the title role. Now it is available for amateur production and Shaftesbury Arts Centre’s Music and Drama Group has taken the baton.
Directed by Rosie King, with David Grierson in charge of the music and the excellent nine-piece Folkstone Star Melody Makers, the show has a cast of 30 singing, dancing actors. If you are a fan of the original show, you’ll recognise the show-stopping numbers, led by Flash, Bang, Wallop and including She’s Too Far Above Me, If the Rain’s Gonna Fall, Pick out a Simple Tune and the title song. I guess the new additions are a matter of taste. Personally, in spite of the fact that at Shaftesbury sisters Georgina and Ella Cluett have a chance for a duet, I would jettison Just a Little Touch of Happiness, which attempts to reflect Donald McGill postcards but ends up smutty, and tuneless to boot.
Of course the central character is Arthur Kipps, an orphan sent by his aunt and uncle to be apprenticed in a drapers shop. As he leaves, he gives his best friend Ann (touchingly played by Georgina Cluett) half a sixpence “as a token of their eternal love.” He keeps the other half.
Fast forward seven years and Arthur is a successful drapers assistant, working with his fellow apprentices to satisfy the exacting Mr Shalford (Chris Bailward). One of the regular customers is the patronising and demanding Mrs Walsingham (nicely done by Sammy Upton). Her daughter Helen (Molly Walker) has caught our Arthur’s eye. When Helen suggests he enrols in her art evening classes, he is even more smitten.
On his way back from class he is knocked over by a slightly tipsy cyclist, the actor and writer Chitterlow (a scene-stealing performance from the excellent Martin Porter), and co-incidentally discovers that the grandfather he never knew has left him a fortune, about £2m a year in today’s money.
Now the Walsinghams are not what they seem, living in impoverished gentility. Helen is persuaded to accept the uncouth Arthur’s attentions so that her mother and brother James can get their hands on the dosh. Our hero is humiliated at luncheons and dinners, lectured in the correct use of vowels and consonants and invited to a musical soiree programmed for bassoon and organ solos – to which he brings his beloved banjo. There he meets Ann, now a parlourmaid to hostess Lady Punnett (the terrific Mary Ridgeway).
He realises he is comfortable with his childhood sweetheart in a way he will never be with Helen, at more or less the same time as the ghastly James Walsingham is exposed as a crook who has taken all his money.
Of course the ending is happy. Not only do Arthur and Ann find each other again, but his fellow apprentices from Shalford’s also find perfect partners, and Chitterlow’s latest play, in which Arthur has invested, is a huge success on Shaftesbury Avenue (neat, that!).
It falls to Robert Stanley to take the title role, and he energetically conveys the hopes, fears and confusions of young love as he is torn between the two women he thinks he loves. He’s almost never off stage and his enthusiasm is infectious.
Many other performers contribute memorable cameos in this all-action show. It’s encouraging to see so many young actors taking part in this show, and promises much for the future of the group.
Kipps continues from Thursday 18th to Saturday 20th July at the Arts Centre.
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