Scene 7

Lionel’s grubby flat.

LIONEL:

I had become enchanted with the story Well, the film version anyway. The first song I wrote was WHERE IS LOVE. 1 was in my car, returning from somewhere, and I had to pull over and write it down while it was still fresh in my mind.

You know somethin’? I have never spent more than an hour on any tune. A song should be like a sneeze – spontaneous.

Anyway, 1fled with a mate to a little fishing village near Torremolinos in Spain and rented a little place there, with a maid, for two pounds a week and wrote OLIVER! there.

That little fishing village near Torremolinos… it was like another world. The sun, the sea, the quiet… it all came together, and the songs just poured out of me.

When I came back I hawked it around about a dozen managements and they all turned it down. They said, with it full of orphans and set in a workhouse, it sounded too depressing.

Eventually, Donald Albery, owner of four West End theatres, took a chance on it. The rest is history…

Lighting changes and we see Lionel, John, Alma, and a few musicians sing/play a medley of  songs: WHERE IS LOVE…GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO…REVIEWING THE SITUATION

(add a verse or two of each song)

ALMA:
(singing along)
You’ve outdone yourself this time, Lionel. This is magic.

JOHN:
(grinning)
I told you it would be a hit.

End of scene

Scene 8

Lionel sitting at a table drinking from a glass of whiskey. He looks at the almost empty whiskey bottle. John and Alma are close by.

LIONEL:

(to John)  You drinkin’ all my whiskey?

JOHN:

Your whiskey! Who bought and paid for it? Come on, Lionel, you’ve had enough for  now.

ALMA:

Yes Lionel. You’ve got a premiere in a few hours. You need to sober up.

LIONEL: Who’s drunk? It would take more than this gnats piss (waves his glass) to get me high (waves about) You got anything stronger? (this to John) You know…the old wacky baccky…or somethin’ stronger…

JOHN:

I don’t do any of that stuff. You know that. Why don’t you ask your other so-called mates.

ALMA:

Lionel! You’re supposed to be escorting me to the show. You need to pull yourself together.

JOHN:

Something’s bothering you. I can see it In your eyes. What is it?

LIONEL:

I’ll tell you what it is, mate. If anything goes wrong on that stage tonight I am going to walk out of the theatre and wander round Trafalgar Square until it’s all over.  That’s how wound up I feel.

ALMA:

What can go wrong? That last rehearsal was flawless. Everybody said so.

LIONEL:

I’m a believer that if something can go wrong it will.

JOHN:

A pessimist!

LIONEL:

Yeah. A glass half-empty kinda’ guy…(looks  at his empty glass) which reminds me…

Lights dim. Lionel on his own.

 LIONEL:

Something did go wrong. (pause) I’m sitting in the stalls in my ‘escape hatch’ when it  does. At the start of scene two, one of the scenery bits is supposed to move away a bit to reveal a domestic scene but it doesn’t move far enough, and in my state  I saw doom and disaster. I don’t suppose anybody noticed except my self and Sean Kenny the set designer. But I panicked and took off for Trafalgar Square and walked around in a daze until I guessed the show was over. As I got back I could hear this rumbling noise and all this activity outside the theatre. My first thought was ‘my God, they think it was awful’. Then Donald Albery, the owner, spotted me, and grabbed my arm, shouting ‘you have got to go in. They are shouting for you in there. They won’t leave until you go in. There have already been something like twenty five curtain calls. We have a hit. A big hit’

And we had. The biggest hit in the history of the West End musical.  It was to run for 2618 performances,  more than seven years. And during that time it had also run for more than three years on Broadway….

Many people run on stage shouting ‘it’s a hit…we have a hit’ etc. Lionel is laughing and dancing with everybody. We hear a version of FOOD. GLORIOUS FOOD… ETC,

Lights dim, end of scene

END OF ACT 1