Being the season for turkey it is generous of Andrew Lloyd Webber to provide the West End theatre with such a splendid specimen.
His musical, Stephen Ward, aims to redeem the reputation of the society osteopath who provided the posh boys of the Macmillan era with willing and nubile young women.
It is not all bad, just misconceived, tackily staged - swirling curtains and lots of grainy projections - and tedious. Ward's misfortune was to introduce Christine Keeler to both John Profumo, the Secretary for War, and Eugene Ivanov, a Russian naval attaché. Keeler's affairs with them were brief but she developed a taste for questionable West Indians, one of whom got jealous and fired shots at Ward's flat. After Fleet Street's finest got to work - Cold War paranoia was rampant - a classic British sex scandal erupted and Profumo lied to the Commons about their affair.
The musical suggests Ward being charged with living off immoral earnings was the posh boys' revenge for their sexual shenanigans being exposed. Somebody had to pay, just not them.
Alexander Hansen carries the show manfully as Ward, who committed suicide during his trial, but the fact remains he was a pander, a sad, sleazy but not tragic figure who died because he had lost entry to his way of life.
Charlotte Spencer and Charlotte Blackledge (Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies) are well cast as nice young girls of limited talent and there is a witty Sixties review number, We Never Had It So Good, We Never Had It So Often sung by the posh boys and their doxies doing naughties in their undies, but raunchier things get shown on the telly nightly now and it fails to bring the house down.
Keeler today would have gone on to appear on Strictly, Mandy into the Jungle and Profumo would have talked to Oprah. Who this boring, mildly melodious, odious show is meant for is a mystery.
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