Riverside Theatres, Parramatta
June 2, 2018

60 years ago a new Australian musical had its first professional production at the Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown. Lola Montez was a minor hit and one of the show’s excellent songs, Saturday Girl, became top of the hit parade. The book was written by Alan Burke, the lyrics by Peter Benjamin and the marvellous music by Peter Stannard. They produced a chain of songs with easy grace and flowing melodies. The great weakness of the show was Alan Burke’s book. It was simply poor, with many absurdities which no number of re-rewrites seem to have resolved. Since its promising beginnings, the piece has languished, going through many rewrites, including the one for this effective semi-staged production at the Riverside Theatre. (The collaborators went on to write one other show, Pardon Miss Wescott, for Channel 7 in 1959.)

The Riverside cast was excellent. Red Symons as Henry Seekamp and Peter Cousens as Smith were both in fine form. As for Lola, the silly custom in 1958 of having imported stars for big shows was still in place and Mary Preston arrived from England to play Lola. She was dire, singing out of tune more often...