Lost music score for John Osborne's The Entertainer found
More than 50 years after it was last performed with its original musical score, Off Centre Theatre in Monmouth has painstakingly revived the full orchestral score for the play, originally penned by Oscar-winning composer John Addison.
Mr Osborne, a notable modern British playwright with family connections in Newport, was passionate about music halls, and this interest is reflected in the play.
The original production, which hit the stage in 1957, featured Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright.
Mr Osborne crafted the songs, and Mr Addison arranged them, also creating overtures and incidental music for a band, all in the authentic music hall style.
However, when Off Centre Theatre's director, Martin Newman, secured the rights to stage the play, he was surprised to receive only the piano score.
The full band score had been lost and most performances since then have relied solely on the piano.
After discovering that the copyright holders, Samuel French, had no record of the complete score, the diligent search for the music began.
Despite thorough research in UK archives and collections yielding no results, the local production team traced part of the composer's own papers to the Brigham Young University library in Utah.
Dr. David Day and his team at the university unearthed a long-unopened box labelled 'The Entertainer,' which contained 122 pages of the original manuscript music.
The theatre group received the scanned manuscript, which then underwent a complex restoration process.
With the expertise of the production's musical director, Ian Russell, a former principal player with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra, the faded manuscript pages have been converted into usable parts for a band.
The revival of the score has been hailed as an historic achievement for the small-town theatre group.
The production will feature a live band playing the authentic music, possibly for the first time in more than half a century.
Off Centre Theatre's presentation of The Entertainer will be staged at the Savoy Theatre, Monmouth, for three nights on June 19, 20, and 21, all at 7.30pm.
Tickets are available from the theatre's website.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The Life of Chuck review – unmoving Stephen King schmaltz
As prestigious as it might sound to win the Palme d'Or at Cannes or the Golden Lion at Venice, the surest indicator of Oscar recognition has become victory at the far less fancy, far more mainstream Toronto film festival. There isn't a jury-based award, instead there's one decided by an audience vote and, far more often than not, their picks have lined up with those of the Academy. Since 2008, only one People's Choice award winner hasn't then gone on to either take home or be nominated for the best picture Oscar, and while the picks haven't always been the greatest (hello, Jojo Rabbit, Belfast and Three Billboards), they've indicated a broad, crowd-rousing appeal. Last year, despite predictions that Anora or Conclave might triumph, out of nowhere the far less buzzy, and, at that point, distribution-less Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck triumphed, a win that preceded a deal with awards-securing outfit Neon and, now, a confidently positioned early summer release. Such a victory, combined with a sense-assaulting marketing campaign highlighting words like 'life-affirming', 'profound', 'celebration' and 'magical', would have you believe that something rather special is about to burrow its way into your heart, a feeling of wonder set to overwhelm (one quote claims it to be 'It's a Wonderful Life for today'). But try as writer-director Mike Flanagan might, there's something coldly unmoving about it all, a disjointed and dry-eyed tearjerker that never rises above Instagram caption philosophy. Flanagan has become the unofficial adapter-in-chief of King's work, having made three films while working on two TV shows based on his writing (the pair have both expressed deep admiration for the other on multiple occasions). It tracks given Flanagan's interest in both scares and sentiment (his non-King shows like The Haunting of Hill House have balanced them well) although there's yet to be a real slam-dunk among them. Like many of the more faithful adaptations, both Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep have their share of effective moments (the latter boasting a particularly terrifying turn from Rebecca Ferguson) but they get dragged down having to untangle King's often baffling explanations, fumbling overly convoluted plots that might have worked better on the page (Flanagan's best film remains his stripped-back King-less debut, the barnstorming home invasion thriller Hush). The Life of Chuck has the unmistakeable feeling of back-of-drawer King, familiar ideas given a quick, yet incomplete, dust-off for a late-stage novella (it's one of three stories from the 2020 collection If It Bleeds, the last adaptation being Mr Harrigan's Phone, a similarly reheated misfire). It's a trio of tales, all centered around Chuck, played as an adult by Tom Hiddleston, who initially appears on a strange billboard seen by Chiwetel Ejiofor's confused teacher (Ejiofor gives one of the film's few standout performances). In the first, most effective, section, the world is crashing to a halt with natural disasters forcing people to examine their lives and lost loves, hoping to find a hand to hold as everything fades to black. Tributes to Chuck haunt them, as if his death somehow means more than theirs, from posters to TV commercials to his face inside their windows. In the middle section we get to actually meet him, as an everyman accountant, life narrated by Nick Offerman in one of the film's more annoyingly mannered touches. He engages in a rather mortifying dance sequence before we go back for the final act, encountering him as a child. It's a film about life and death and love and family and dreams but only ever in the most simplistic of fridge magnet ways (it could have been called The Live Laugh Love of Chuck), urging and insisting us to feel something without ever giving us enough for any of it to sink in. The tease of the storytelling, hinting at a great, earth-shattering reveal, masks a rather empty space at its centre, and when details of the 'twist' arrive, if one could even call it that given how messy the plotting gets, it turns a feelgood film into an odd and, from one viewpoint, sinister tale of narcissism and revenge (a thriller using similar components could have been far more entertaining). The big problem is that we never really get to know or understand Chuck; we're mostly just told about him via voiceover (he contains multitudes, allegedly!) and we're expected to figure him, and the meaning of life, out from faux-profound sermons about math and the cosmos. Hiddleston has very little to do but dance and we spend more time with Benjamin Pajak as a younger Chuck, who does an effective job at charming us through well-trodden coming-of-age scenes. Flanagan elsewhere relies a little too heavily on his go-to troupe of actors (Mark Hamill, wife Kate Siegel, Samantha Sloyan), which leads to some distracting miscasts. I'm not really sure what to take from The Life of Chuck, a solidly directed yet stilted, stop-start piece of film-making that reveres a lesser, little-known work of King but doesn't really explain to us why. The final scene, intended to hit us with a cascade of emotion, is abrupt and unsatisfying, frustration overriding any impulse to cry (the end-of-days melancholy of the first section is close to piercing through the most) and we're left feeling empty. Life is full of meaning but The Life of Chuck struggles to find any. The Life of Chuck is out in US cinemas on 6 June, Australian cinemas on 21 August and in the UK on 22 August
Leader Live
27 minutes ago
- Leader Live
Jury deliberations begin in Harvey Weinstein's sex crimes retrial
The seven-woman, five-man jury is considering two counts of criminal sex act and one count of rape, each relating to a different accuser and a different date. In this case, the criminal sex act charge is the higher-degree felony. Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty. Nearly eight years ago, a series of sexual misconduct allegations against the Oscar-winning movie producer propelled the #MeToo movement. Some of those accusations later generated criminal charges and convictions in New York and California. The New York conviction from 2020 was subsequently overturned, leading to the retrial before a new jury and a different judge. Jurors heard more than five weeks of testimony, including lengthy and sometimes fiery questioning of Weinstein's three accusers in the case. Jessica Mann said he raped her in 2013, when she was trying to build an acting career. Miriam Haley accused him of forcibly performing oral sex on her in 2006, when she was looking for work in entertainment production. Kaja Sokola, who was not involved in Weinstein's first trial, told jurors that he forced oral sex on her, too, during 2006. At the time, she was a teenage fashion model trying to break into acting. 'They all had dreams of pursuing careers in the defendant's world, the entertainment industry,' prosecutor Nicole Blumberg told jurors in her closing argument on Tuesday. She contended that Weinstein let the women think he was interested in their careers when what actually interested him were their bodies, and 'he was going to have their bodies and touch their bodies whether they wanted him to or not'. Weinstein chose not to testify. His defence called other witnesses, including some former friends of Ms Sokola's and Ms Mann's. Weinstein's attorneys argued that all three accusers consented to Weinstein's advances because they wanted help with their Hollywood aims. All three stayed on friendly terms with him afterwards, a point the defence emphasised. 'It's transactional, folks. Yes, he wants to fool around with them, and yes, they want something from him,' defence lawyer Arthur Aidala said in his summation on Tuesday.
South Wales Argus
31 minutes ago
- South Wales Argus
Jeremy Clarkson bans fan from The Farmer's Dog pub
It comes after fans took online to slam the Clarkson's Farm star for the price of a pie at his new pub, The Farmer's Dog. The pub has been at the centre of the latest series of Clarkson's Farm. As well as the departure of Kaleb Cooper and the arrival of new star Harriet Cowan, Jeremy's bid to open a new pub in the Cotswolds has been the key storyline of the latest batch of episodes. Since opening, The Farmer's Dog has attracted huge crowds. Renovated by Jeremy, along with help from his girlfriend Lisa Hogan. Series 4 of Clarkson's Farm. Who do we like most? Endgame? Or Richard Ham? — Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) May 30, 2025 During the show, Jeremy reformed his collective of local farmers, who he had agreed to help out by buying their produce for his pub along with his own beef, in a bid to make sure everything sold in the pub and Lisa's farm shop could be sourced locally and with British produce while still being an affordable price. But some Clarkson's Farm fans say they have a slightly different view on what is affordable, as they hit out at the £24 asking price for a pie and veg at the new pub. Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, user @kalrlk said: "Thought @JeremyClarkson wanted an affordable pub for customers. £24 for pie and veg is a bit much." @devonboy3410 said: "Dead weight for British beef is far too expensive £6.89/kg for R4L down from the record high £6.98/kg earlier in the month. I can't wait till we get US beef cuts here because British beef industry is now taking the p*** at those prices." Recommended reading: Jeremy then replied to tell them: "You are now banned from the pub." Another said to Jeremy: "@grok what would be the price in the UK to buy and raise local cows and how does that translate to the beef pie price of 24 British pounds." Jeremy replied: "Watch the show. It's explained." @cudaplumcrazy said: "Your cows aren't they Jeremy?", to which Clarkson said: "Some are. Most come from other farmers in the area and we pay a premium. We are here to back British farming. If you don't want to do that, fine. Enjoy your chlorine." The first six episodes of Clarkson's Farm 4 are now available on the service, with another two to follow this Friday.
