Divorce Me, Darling!
| Divorce Me, Darling! | |
|---|---|
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| Music | Sandy Wilson |
| Lyrics | Sandy Wilson |
| Book | Sandy Wilson |
| Basis | sequel to the musical The Boy Friend |
| Productions | 1965 West End |
Divorce Me, Darling is a musical written by Sandy Wilson. Set ten years after the events depicted in Wilson's much better known The Boy Friend, it is a pastiche of 1930s musicals (in particular those of Cole Porter) rather than the "Roaring Twenties" shows (mostly early Rodgers and Hart) that inspired the earlier show.
Divorce Me, Darling! was first presented at The Players' Theatre on December 9, 1964. (This is where Wilson's The Boy Friend first appeared.) On 1 February 1965, it transferred to the West End and ran for 91 performances at London's Globe Theatre. It had its U.S. premiere at the Arena Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, Houston, Texas, in 1984. It played at the Chichester Festival Theatre in July 1997, featuring Ruthie Henshall as Polly.
It is still occasionally revived at both an amateur and professional level, sometimes as a double bill with The Boy Friend.
The action takes place over two days in the summer of 1936 on the French Riviera. The characters are older versions of the same characters introduced in The Boy Friend.
In Nice on the French Riviera in the foyer of the Hotel du Paradis greeted by the hotel manager Gaston singing "Here We Are In Nice Again" with an assortment of hotel guests. The three naughty wives (Dulcie, Fay and Nancy) confess to Hortense, the hotel receptionist, they are on a spree having told their French husbands they were off to England to visit their families there. Polly, our heroine, arrives but without her husband, Sir Tony, busy at home handling their estate. The three naughty wives reappear with giddy greetings all around. Reflecting on their dreary mates who seem more concerned with matters of business than with matters of the heart, they croon "Whatever Happened To Love?" Hortense, hotel receptionist/confidante consoles the frustrated wives and cheers them up with the news that tomorrow night an international star, the mysterious Madame K, will appear in un Grand Cabaret. The American, Bobby van Husen, a bit tipsy, enters from the bar and sings "Someone to Dance With" offering to waltz, fox-trot, tango, or rumba if only he could find a partner. Hardly recognizing one another, Bobby and Polly meet and ask about each other's mate. He reports on his wife Maisie who is supposedly in London trying to round up a husband for his older sister Hannah. Bobby and Polly plan to have dinner together. Meanwhile, Mme Dubonnet confides in Hortense that she is the mysterious entertainer Madame K; she also admits she is Polly's stepmother, married to Percy who fled to South America after losing his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. With the loss of their fortune and his escape to the New World, she was forced to pursue a lowly career in cabaret. She wants to keep the awful truth from Polly; she's changed her hair to blond and her name to Mme K (that ought to do it!) and expresses her hard, heart-breaking life behind the "glittering facade" of her theatrical calling in her number, "Lights! Music!"
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