The Dancing Years

This must have been one of the last large-scale television productions of a musical ever to be made.

Unashamedly romantic, Ivor Novello's stage work from 1939 tells of a young composer who falls for a jealous opera star, and their tempestuous relationship spanning several decades.

A large set takes over the studio, allowing plenty of room for the swirling dancers, handsome officers and Austrian peasants so familiar in these older shows.

The performances are excellent - Marilyn Hill Smith sings superbly while Celia Gregory mimes the songs (and Ann Howard sings for Joyce Grant), and Gregory is excellent at portraying the vacillating, obsessive prima donna. Anthony Valentine in the Novello part (composer Rudi Kleber) makes the dated dialogue seem just plausible, and as Grete, the young girl who asks Rudi to give her first refusal when she is old enough to marry him, a request which has disastrous repercussions, Susan Skipper sings and dances charmingly.

All in all, anyone who enjoys the old style of musical comedy, when the cast really had to be able to sing (i.e. with trained, light operatic voices), and a separate chorus of dancers was customary, will be delighted with this production. For once, it's true that they don't make them like this anymore.

The operettas of Ivor Novello are really rather odd and the paucity of revivals does not surprise me, despite the lingering popularity of some of their music. One major peculiarity is the author-composer's preference for explicitly introducing songs as acknowledged songs, i.e., performed in the context of a rehearsal, singing lesson, or musical play within the musical play. He does not sustain this practice with sufficient consistency to create a sense of realism, however, and the ability of his characters to sing perfectly at sight from manuscript is far from believable!

Novello devised his shows with the firm intention of playing the heroes himself. As he did not sing, neither do they. Presumably fearful of being upstaged, he also kept the other male prinicipals short of opportunities for vocal display. This results in a severe lack of musical contrast. "The Dancing Years" would benefit enormously from a few vigorous baritone numbers to offset the surfeit of soprano sweetness.

The general mood of the piece also leads me to suppose that the choice of theatre tickets in Britain in 1939 (when it had its premiere) rested primarily with wives and daughters. In some respects, the dramatic world of Ivor Novello resembles the fictional world of Barbara Cartland - only with less passion. The chief characteristics here are sentimentality and an exaggerated kind of ingenuous charm. There is nothing at all satirical about the text of "The Dancing Years"; unlike more frivolous operettas it needs to be performed with (a simulacrum of) sincerity, and one of the main strengths of this production (broadcast on British television in 1979) is its avoidance of any irony of tone, look, or gesture. The cast plays it absolutely straight, regardless of its shallowness. Lacking dramatic impetus, such material can only succeed on its own very limited terms - and succeed it does in the end, I think. Whatever his shortcomings as a dramatist, there is no denying that Ivor Novello excelled in composing a certain type of song.

Much credit in this instance also goes to Celia Gregory as Maria, the jealous prima donna. She manages to deliver her clichéd dialogue with total seriousness (and a damning review in "The Times" of her performance seems to me thoroughly unjustified). Marilyn Hill Smith provides Maria's singing voice admirably, and the miming is good enough. I could not entirely overcome the suspicion that Anthony Valentine is too intelligent an actor to inhabit the persona of Rudi Kleber (the Novello role) with total conviction, but he makes a very good attempt. After all, could anybody prevent Rudi coming over as a bit of ninny? Susan Skipper, as the ingenue Greta, judges her ingenuousness to a nicety, and I am grateful to her for it, as this character could easily be revoltingly cute.

Another reviewer has rightly observed that 'they don't make them like this any more'. It has come as a surprise to me - a pleasant one - that they were still doing so in 1979. Compared with many German TV operettas of that decade, this production is a model of good taste. As an operetta, "The Dancing Years" has numerous glaring weaknesses, but I am glad that ATV allowed me to judge it for myself by putting it on video so faithfully.

I was so pleasantly surprised by this made-for-TV film that I just had to offer a comment. Although written around late 1930's, I found the dialogue to be honest and meaningful, giving an unexpected realism to the music and to the emotional effect of the overall story. The film starts slow, but give it a chance. It has remarkably honest human moments - moments of honesty in the dialogue which takes the piece way beyond it's genre - a quaint English operetta - into the realm of exceptional musical theatre. I'd like to thank my friend, Dane, for introducing this wonderful music, composer and story to me. I have learned to cherish a new composer, Ivor Novello.