In ancient Greece the Olympic games are coming to an end when the victorious Kinesias (Bruce Yarnell) appears having defeated the Spartans. Stopping only to be honoured by the Chief of State (Cyril Ritchard), he heads home to see his wife Lysistrata (Dran Seitz), the happiest girl in the world. War soon breaks out again fermented by Pluto (Cyril Ritchard). The goddess Diana (Janice Rule) interferes by getting Lysistrata and the other women to withhold certain favours from their husband whilst they continue to fight. Although peace ensues, war breaks out again, this time the women lock themselves away...

The Happiest Girl in the World (1961) is a comic musical with music by Jacques Offenbach, adaptation by Robert DeCormier and Jay Gorney, orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett and Hershey Kay and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. The show was based on the comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes and ran for ninety-eight performances.

From the opening bars of the overture you can tell that this is an oddity for a Broadway show, sounding more like early nineteenth century operetta. The musical sounds like a missing Gilbert and Sullivan show, so much so that some of the ideas seem to have been directly lifted from The Mikado. Interesting until you get to ‘Adrift on a Star’ and the musical borrowing becomes musical theft, as the song is little more than a copy of Léo Delibes’s 'Flower Song' from the opera Lakmé.

I had to go back and re-evaluate the disc and it would appear that the composer has borrowed heavily, which might explain why it sounded so good. Then I realised that the show had used a lot of the music of Jacques Offenbach, which presumably makes it more of a homage, which is fair enough, Kismet had done a similar thing with the music of Alexander Borodin. I guess it’s an easy way of acquiring memorably strong songs.

The standout performance is delivered by Cyril Ritchard, who also directed the show and who has the perfect voice for comic operetta; this is more of an operetta than it is a Broadway musical. Lyrically the songs are suggestively light-hearted as befits a comedy and with the help of some strong tunes the disc is eminently listenable.

The track listing is as follows:-

01 - 'Overture / The Glory That Is Greece'
02 - 'The Happiest Girl in the World'
03 - 'The Greek Marine'
04 - 'Shall We Say Farewell?'
05 - 'Never Be-Devil the Devil'
06 - 'Whatever That May Be'
07 - 'Eureka'
08 - 'The Oath'
09 - 'Vive La Virtue!'
10 - 'Finale, Act I'
11 - 'Adrift on a Star'
12 - 'That’ll Be the Day'
13 - 'How Soon, O Moon?'
14 - 'Love-Sick Serenade'
15 - 'Five Minutes of Spring'
16 - 'Never Trust a Virgin'
17 - 'Entrance of the Courtesans'
18 - 'Vive La Virtue (reprise) / Finale'

It depends how you feel about composers standing on the shoulders of others to whether you feel the show is plagiarism or just borrowing, either way The Happiest Girl in the World makes for a great record.

9

Charles Packer