Weighed down by diamante, rhinestones, pearls, crystal beads, sequins and long, pale gold bullion fringe, it is a miracle that Julie Andrews ever managed to navigate the stairs she descended at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane while singing I Could Have Danced All Night.
The dress she wore when playing Eliza Doolittle in the 1958 production of My Fair Lady won acclaim for its designer, the legendary Cecil Beaton. The show ran in London for five and a half years, and was thought to be the most expensive then staged in the West End.
Beaton’s dress, made from ivory satin overlaid with fine chiffon and taffeta, has undergone more than 100 hours of meticulous conservation work before being displayed on a mannequin at V&A as a centrepiece of its new exhibition, Re:Imagining Musicals, which opens on Saturday.
It is one of 100 items, most of them being displayed for the first time, that celebrate the “transformative power” of musical theatre, combining “artistry, music, design, costumes, engineering and technology with the audience’s imagination”, said Simon Sladen, the V&A’s senior curator for modern and contemporary theatre and performance.
The free display includes new acquisitions and objects – including posters, cast recordings, props and costumes – from the Bunnett-Muir Musical Theatre Archive, a private collection of memorabilia that was donated to the V&A in 2018.
The actor Paul O’Grady donated the dress and wig he wore when playing Miss Hannigan in Annie in 1998, a role he will reprise in a new UK tour of the show next year. Costumes from Six the Musical, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Company, and A Chorus Line have also been acquired for the exhibition.
A worn and patched pair of shoes worn by Elaine Paige when she played Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats in 1981 illustrates a “show that really brought animals to the stage in a way we hadn’t seen before”, said Sladen.
There is also the original cast recording of Evita, another award-winning Lloyd Webber musical. Opening in 1978, it starred Paige – “the first lady of musical theatre in this country”, according to Sladen – and David Essex. Other objects relate to performances by Angela Lansbury, a “titan of musical theatre and absolutely remarkable individual”, who died on Tuesday.
The exhibition is arranged thematically. A section on literature, film and popular culture looks at adaptations and retellings, such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet reimagined as rivalrous New York teenage street gangs in the 1950s in West Side Story. More recently it inspired & Juliet, a show that imagines a life after Romeo and includes numbers by Britney Spears and Ariana Grande.
The 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was first adapted as a musical by the author L Frank Baum in Chicago in 1902, and produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican in 1987. It inspired Wicked, a show telling the story from the perspective of the witches and exploring what it means to be an outsider.
Another section on history, society and conflict focuses on how musical theatre has drawn from real life. “You might think conflict is an odd thing to bring to the stage. But we’ve seen throughout the history of the musical, whether it’s the Vietnam war, the second world war, the first world war, American independence, that musicals can bring comfort, they can evaluate history, or they can be critical, they can shine a light on unknown stories or lighter moments,” said Sladen.
Hair and Miss Saigon were “two very different retellings” of the period of the Vietnam war, he added, with items on display including the original 1968 Broadway cast recording of Hair.
A third section on biographical musicals includes a costume from Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, a show that tells the story of the teenager Jamie Campbell, who wanted to wear girl’s clothes. “Bringing real people to the stage carries particular responsibilities,” said Sladen.
The exhibition ends with a 20-minute video compilation from 30 productions, from Oliver at the Palladium in 1995 through to Singin’ in the Rain on UK tour this year.
“It’s a celebration of musical theatre – that wonderful vibrancy and vitality, but also the whole landscape of musical theatre from small venues to mega musicals in the West End. Shows that people know and love, like Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables – but also those that many won’t have heard of. It’s our grand finale,” said Sladen.
Re:Imagining Musicals opens on 15 October 2022 until 27 November 2023
