REVIEW: Must Close Saturday, The Decline and Fall Of The British Musical Flop ✭✭✭✭

Must Close Saturday Review by Adrian Wright

Must Close Saturday The Decline and Fall of the British Musical Flop by Adrian Wright Boydell Press 4 Stars ISBN: 9781783272358 Order a copy from Amazon.co.uk If like me you have musical theatre running through your blood, Adrian Wright’s hefty new tome makes for an interesting read. It’s certainly kept me entertained over the festive period. Like Ken Mandelbaum’s Not Since Carrie… which chronicled Broadway musical flops, Wright chronicles British flops from 1960’s The Lily White Boys to 2016’s The Go Between. Whether you agree with Wright’s definition of a flop or not, seeing this weighty collection of British musicals collected together makes you realise that there is probably no subject that is off-limits for musicalisation. The Holocaust, French painters, the Rector Of Stifley, Edward and Mrs Simpson, Marilyn Monroe, Lewis Carroll, Jack the Ripper, the Virgin Mary, sexual problems, the electric chair, the wives of Henry VIII and variations … Read more