Lost Musicals

Lost Musicals is a British musical theatre project established in 1989 by Ian Marshall Fisher. It is dedicated to presenting lost or forgotten musicals by famous American writers, and has been responsible for the first revivals of the lesser-known works of writers such as Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Alan Jay Lerner, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern.

Ian Marshall Fisher researches, reconstructs and directs each show based upon exactly what the writers had written, with no changes, amendments and no edits to their original work. In an interview with The Stage in 2005, Fisher commented "My original idea was to celebrate the writers in accurately presenting what they had written – and I don't just mean the songwriters but the bookwriters too. That's where my series stands alone. Although other series have sprung up in the last ten years, they don't honour and have a love for the books that I do."

In another interview, Fisher criticised what he reviewed as the recent trivialisation of musicals, saying "Those people who were involved in the Broadway musical wanted to speak to the public. The campery and kitschness is something that's been ladled on to it subsequently."

Lost Musicals began in 1989, and its productions have been presented at London's Barbican Centre, the Royal Opera House, Her Majesty's Theatre and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The project's current home is the Sadler's Wells Theatre. Some of the seventy shows presented have included musical sby George S. Kaufman, Howard Dietz, Arthur Schwartz's The Band Wagon, André Previn and Alan Jay Lerner's Coco, Herbert & Dorothy Fields and Cole Porter's Mexican Hayride,Sammy Fain and E.Y. Harburg's Flahooley, Cole Porter and S. J. Perelman's Aladdin,Kurt Weill and Paul Green's Johnny Johnson, Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's By Jupiter,S. J. Perelman, Ogden Nash and Weill's One Touch of Venus, Herbert Fields, B. G. DeSylva & Cole Porter's Du Barry Was a Lady and Jule Styne, Nunnally Johnson and E Y Harburg's Darling of the Day.

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