ABOUT THE MUSICAL

 

The Black & White Ball was a glittering affair, with the celebrities of the day dancing the night away to the strains of Cole Porters’ immortal songs… In 1960”s New York, Leah enters a dilapidated but elegant ballroom, searching for answers to a mystery that has haunted her since childhood. Who murdered Jay St John, a celebrated author and her beloved step-father, twenty years ago in this very room? And can she clear the cloud of suspicion over her mother’s head? She summons the ghost of Jay to help her remember… Together they re-live his story: a young wannabe writer from the mid-west answers the clarion call to move to New York and seek his fortune. He meets Suzanne, the beautiful heiress to New York’s most esteemed publishing house, The Hamilton Press. Suzanne takes Jay under her wing with only one caveat: he must embody artistic integrity or she will destroy him. Jay accepts and  repays her by delivering a first novel which is hailed a masterpiece. And they fall in love. They wed. And Suzanne’s little girl, Leah, adores her new father. A second novel must surely follow. But Jay is plagued with doubts – he embarks on a secret life, searching the seedier side of New York, for inspiration.  Revelations follow in the guise of a drag artist, Ron, who is headlining an all male club in The Village. Ron has a crush on Jay and offers a wealth of potential writing material. Jay is mesmorized by Ron’s androgynous world. Together they secretly embark on Jay’s second novel. Meanwhile, Little Leah and Jay dream up the perfect distraction to Suzanne’s constant pleas for a new book: a black and white ball, in the Venetian style, for New York’s glitterati.  As Jay nears completion of his secret second novel with Ron, the eve of the ball arrives. And at the same time, a menacing threat: Ron is no longer content to remain in the wings and demands equal credit for the book. Knowing Suzanne would see such an arrangement as a betrayal, Jay threatens to burn the novel at the Black and White Ball if Ron continues in his demands. The Black and White Ball is a triumph. Music, dancing and splendour fill the room. Suddenly, a woman in seen on a balcony. A shot rings through the air. She runs, never to be seen again. Or, so it seems…Jay St John lies dead on the ballroom floor. The vault containing his second novel is finally opened, revealing a ream of blank pages. Suzanne is devastated, but relieved to know that Jay stayed true to her. Little Leah is heartbroken…Who killed Jay St. John? Together Leah and her ghost discover the truth in THE BLACK AND WHITE BALL.

 

 

CAST & CREATIVE

Clark - Charles Shirvell

Leah - Kaisa Hammarlund

Vincent - Charles Shirvell

Johnny/Jay - Chris Ellis-Stanton

Hettie - Liza Pulman

Little Leah - Lillie Bone and Jadie Hobson

Slone - Charles Shirvell

Suzanne - Katherine Kingsley

Walter - Charles Shirvell

Dahlia - Liza Pulman

Emcee - Charles Shirvell

Ron/Lottie - Mark Mcgee

Can-Can Girls - Company

Bartender - Charles Shirvell

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Music & Lyrics - Cole Porter

Book - Warner Brown

Music Arranger and Supervisor - Larry Blank

Director - Matthew White

Designer - Charlie Gridlan

Lighting - Rick Fisher

Choreographer - Kenn Oldfield

Music Director - Mark Bousie

 

QUOTES & REVIEWS

 

Kim Poster has produced this Cole Porter musical which takes the known songs of Porter and weaves them into a new storyline…a mystery by Warner Browne in which it’s not hard to guess the murderer but is so beautifully cast, directed, designed, in set and lights, whose standard of quality is amazing to find in studio spaces. It opens with a grown Leah going back to the hall where her mother and famous stepfather Jay St John gave a black and white ball to New York high society in order to launch his new novel which had been kept secret until that night. Jay was gunned down by a woman in a white dress who escaped. No one knew why this shooting happened or who the murderer could have been. Leah has never been able to face the past nor get on with the present but upon seeing Jay’s ghost in that same room…the whole tale is unravelled. Jay married Suzanne a hard hitting businesswoman and his publisher who has made him into a successful writer, living a conventionally structured life in Connecticutt with her young daughter Leah who adores Jay. But Jay, bored by this domestic life and hit by writer’s block, by chance, walks into a gay bar in New York, and sees a fabulous act of a drag queen named Ron. They meet and then meet regularly as Ron talks to Jay giving him his next novel. Ron then decides the book is as much his and demands credit…no money but credit. Jay refuses and you can guess the rest. No one knew of Jay’s double life nor could they guess at a drag queen in revenge. As it turned out when Suzanne opened the box at the ball in which the new manuscript lay, the pages were all empty! Leah could now lay the ghost of Jay and become the writer she had always intended. The songs are not particularly original nor do they always fit the storyline, such as Jay singing to an adorable young Leah, the saucy song, You Got That Thing or a minor character singing, What Is This Thing Called Love. But then you have Can-Can, one of Cole’s most hilarious pieces, done by the whole company with high velocity. There’s Ours, Ridin High, All of You … songs of delight as the skilled singing and charm of the acting along with a shuffle here and there find you satisfaction at the King’s Head.  -  Blanch Marvin

 

New show for old songs works well.

You could just release an album of lesser-known Cole Porter songs. But how much more creative to reset them in a new musical, as Warner Brown has done. These might not be the tunes people hum night and day, but each has some surprise turn in the melodic line that gives a distinctive quality, along with sophisticated lyrics that deceptively make lyric-writing seem a natural part of human behaviour.

Brown short-circuits problems of any mismatch between new book and older numbers by giving a framing perspective on events through brief scenes set in 1969, as a woman revisits the once-fashionable hotel where her stepfather was shot 20 years before.

His Ghost appears, in evening-dress formality contrasting her modern garb. A few moments tantalise, then it’s back to tell the whole story once we’re hooked. All good stock devices, followed by more ideas that might have come right out of the period. There’s Johnny Johnson, up from Montana, stumbling in New York upon elegant socialite publisher Suzanne, being re-christened Jay St John and publishing a novel which brings the instant success that came so easily in musicals. Inevitably, too, there’s angst to follow. 

The plot’s only shortcoming is failing to establish how suspicion over his murder affected the lives of those around Johnny/Jay. But the eventual solution, the clue we see together with the adult Leah as events replay, is strong and ties in with the theme of the dead man’s artistic possessiveness and sexual self-questioning.

Matthew White’s production uses the limited King’s Head space fluidly, while designer Charlie Gridlan suggests former hotel magnificence simply, with Rick Fisher’s lighting at times creating a moonlit elegance. Performances are top-notch, Katherine Kingsley coolly confident, Chris Ellis-Stanton increasingly trying to maintain a confident front and Mark McGee bringing a glint of purpose and a suggestion of steel from his drag-act (in a ”men only” club, using forties parlance), which fleshes out into the production high-spot of Porter’s Can-Can. 

Charles Shirvell and Liza Pulman fill-in many of the songs finely, Pulman’s gleaming-toothed, lipsticked affluence ironically showing high society sanitising the street-grit of ‘Love for Sale’.
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