Camden Features: Ann Pennington | The New Yorkers on Broadway

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Published: 9 April 2009

Ann Pennington in The New Yorkers on Broadway in 1930

Digging up lost gems of the past

A SORT of Indiana Jones of the musical world – without the wanton destruction of ancient civilisations – Ian Marshall Fisher travels the world unearthing Broadway shows and dusty scores that have fallen into obscurity.
For two short runs each year, the Hampstead curator’s semi-staged Lost Musicals series at Sadler’s Wells attracts sell-out crowds and the occasional big name star (Betsy Blair, who died last month, performed in several past productions).
Mr Fisher’s latest discovery is a Cole Porter offering which many, despite Mr Porter’s stellar reputation, might not know: The New Yorkers, a madcap romantic vehicle about an heiress and a gangster described as a “dizzy distillation of the perpetually party-going Twenties”. Try saying that after a couple of stiff Manhattans.
Herbert Fields, of Annie Get Your Gun fame, wrote the book and Porter contributed numbers including the notorious Love for Sale, banned from radio airwaves for many years.
As an encore in June, Fisher is presenting Kurt Weill’s first US musical, Johnny Johnson, a giddy mix of cowboy ballads, French music hall and American Vaudeville.
Whether it was a misunderstood masterpiece or deservedly forgotten is for you, the audience, to decide.
SIMON WROE

* The New Yorkers is at Sadler’s Wells’ Lilian Baylis Studio on Sundays April 12, 19 at 4pm and 26 at 2pm and 6.15pm. Johnny Johnson is on Sundays June 14, 21, 28 and July 5 at 4pm and 12 at 4pm and 6.15pm. £21-£27.50.
0844 412 4300

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