Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be

Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be
Music	Lionel Bart
Lyrics	Lionel Bart
Book	Frank Norman
Productions	1960 West End

Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'be is a musical comedy about Cockney low-life characters in the 1950s, including spivs, prostitutes, teddy-boys and corrupt policemen. The work is more of a play with music than a conventional musical. The original play, by Frank Norman, who though born in Bristol lived his adult life in London, was intended to be a straight theatrical piece, but was supplemented with music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, who also grew up in London's East End.

Norman initially wrote the piece as a play (with no music), but after Joan Littlewood read it, she asked Bart to write the music and lyrics. It was first performed by Theatre Workshop, produced and directed by Littlewood in February 1959 at their home, the Theatre Royal Stratford East. It subsequently played at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End, starting on 11 February 1960. It ran for 886 performances. The cast featured Maurice Kaufmann, Wallas Eaton, Miriam Karlin, Barbara Windsor, Toni Palmer, Bryan Pringle, Ray Ausin, Tom Chatto, Paddy Joyce, Edward Caddick, Yootha Joyce, George Sewell, Michael O'Brien, Rick Morgan, Louis Adams, Neville Munroe, Mary Davies, Mary Sheen, Barbara Cording, Donald Wilson, James Dark and Tamba Allen.

It was a Cockney comedy and the dialogue is in the Cockney dialect with much rhyming slang and thieves' cant. Some audiences found it difficult to understand, and a list of more than a dozen phrases with standard English translations was supplied in the programme.

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