23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South Wales Argus
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.
