Please, sir, can we have some more?

Lionel Bart, who died a pauper in a west London flat seven years ago, was, apart from Noel Coward, the most naturally gifted British songwriter of the last century. His rags-to-riches-to-rags life story is now the subject of an entertaining musical, It's A Fine Life!, written by Chris Bond, using Bart's back catalogue, at the Queen's Theatre in Hornchurch, Essex.

The venue is appropriate in its proximity to the Theatre Royal at Stratford where Bart (right) enjoyed his first great success, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, in 1959. There followed Oliver!, his greatest hit; Blitz!, a cavalcade of East End life in the last war; and his biggest flop, Twang!!, a Robin Hood burlesque best described as "one exclamation mark too far."

Operating on the principle that Bart's spirit, if not exactly his biography, can be deduced from his music and lyrics, Bond and his director Bob Carlton have charted Bart's progress from 1950s Soho coffee bars (he wrote hits for Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard) to the West End theatre and the Swinging Sixties with considerable acuity, and Matt Devitt is likeable both as wastrel and artist; he sure knows about a Bart.

The evening is full of delight and surprise, especially when we hear songs like Don't Look at Me Just Listen from Bart's never-finished 'work in progress', Quasimodo. Real-life characters – Joan Littlewood, Barbara Windsor – share the stage with Fagin, Nancy and Bill Sikes.

Bart blew everything away in a drug-fuelled, alcoholic orgy lasting two decades, but his music is a salutary reminder of a time of little disparity between popular culture and show tunes. Not bad for an East End immigrant Jew who couldn't tell the difference, he says, between A-flat and a council flat.

Michael Coveney

First Post - 31st August 2006

2002 - 2007 http://www.return-to-the-forbidden-planet.co.uk