Salad Days

Abstract

For many, British musical theatre of the 1950s is epitomized by two classics: Julian Slade’s quirky Salad Days (1954), and Sandy Wilson’s breezy The Boy Friend (1953). Not only have these shows become enduring small-scale favourites, but so too have their writers become, to a certain generation, familiar names, thanks to their irreverent treatment as the characters Julian and Sandy in the radio comedy Round The Horne. Projected as camp caricatures by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams trading in the euphemistic slang Polari, Julian and Sandy featured in weekly sketches throughout the late sixties, bringing a fondly grotesque parody of gay lifestyles into British households. In her new book, And This is My Friend Sandy, the title of which riffs off one of the stock phrases from that radio show, Deborah Philips explores one of these writers, Sandy Wilson, in the context of The Boy Friend, London Theatre, and gay culture. The early part of the book charts his Oxford University experiences in revue, alongside the likes of contemporaries Donald Swann and Kenneth Tynan. Seen through the lens of Wilson’s own autobiography, this reveals an ardent theatre lover who would migrate to London’s Soho as successful student revues transferred. Soho itself is explored in chapter two, very much as a vibrant home to London’s gay community, and it is here, at the intimate music-hall venue the Players’ Theatre Club, in 1953, that The Boy Friend first opened, before transferring in an extended version to the West End the following year. Situating Wilson’s early theatrical success in the context of London’s gay culture of the 1950s enables Philips’ account to emphasize the strong influences he had from British musical theatre’s iconic gay establishment. This was a time during which the restrictive laws against homosexuality were being both publicly exercised (with the great classical actor John Gielgud’s notorious arrest for cottaging in 1953), and tested (with the publication of the Wolfenden Report in 1957). It was also a time during which personalities like Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, and Binkie Beaumont enjoyed huge status and acclaim, their sexuality masked yet resonant on Deborah Philips, And This is My Friend Sandy: Sandy Wilson’s The Boy Friend, London Theatre and Gay Culture, London, Methuen, 2021, 256 pp, 5 Illustrations, ISBN 9781350174238