After the Ball (musical)

After the Ball
Mrs Erlynne and the company
Music	Noël Coward
Lyrics	Noël Coward
Productions	1954 London

After the Ball is a musical by Noël Coward, based on Lady Windermere's Fan.

After a provincial tour, the musical premiered at the Globe Theatre, London, on 10 June 1954 and ran for 188 performances until 20 November 1954. Robert Helpmann was the director, and the cast included Mary Ellis, Vanessa Lee, Peter Graves and Irene Browne.

After the Ball was the last Coward musical launched in the West End; his last two musicals debuted on Broadway before opening in London. After the Ball enjoyed a 1999 Coward centenary production at the Peacock Theatre, London.

Coward decided, in August 1953, to base a musical on Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan; he worked on it until January 1954. He delegated the first draft of the script to his assistant Cole Lesley. Lesley "cut out the more glaringly melodramatic of Wilde's lines and divided the remainder into sections ending with a suitable 'cue for a song'" "I know that it is very good indeed," wrote Coward of the finished piece, "I have... turned out some of the best lyrics I have ever written" Coward worked on the piece during his customary winter holiday in Jamaica in December 1953. His music director, Norman Hackforth, flew to Jamaica to help him finish the score after Christmas. The scenery and costume design was by Doris Zinkeisen.

Coward cast Mary Ellis in the leading role of Mrs Erlynne, unwisely accepting without audition her assurance that, in her late fifties, she was singing as well as ever. Hackforth soon realised that she could not adequately sing Coward's difficult music for the role. In Coward's absence, Hackforth reluctantly cut the most challenging music for the twelve-week tour opening in Liverpool on 1 March 1954, but he was still dismayed by Ellis's delivery of the music. Coward returned to England at the end of March and saw the production at Bristol on 1 April. He was distressed by what he saw and heard: "the absence of style in the direction... a great deal of the performance was inaudible.... Vanessa [Lee] sang divinely but acted poorly. Mary Ellis acted well but sang so badly I could hardly bear it. The orchestra was appalling, the orchestrations beneath contempt, and poor Norman [Hackforth] conducted like a stick of wet asparagus.".