 EXPRESSO BONGO
a musical in two acts taken from a story by Wolf Mankowitz. Book by Wolf
Mankowitz and Julian More. Lyrics by Julian More, Monty Norman and David
Heneker. Music by David Heneker and Monty Norman. Theatre Royal, Nottingham - 24 March, 1958
Saville Theatre 23 April, 1959 (316 perfs)
Story:
Agent Johnnie discovers Herbert Rudge playing bongo drums
in a coffee bar in Soho and signs him to a management contract. Renamed
'Bongo' Herbert and fitted out with a loud, rhythmic song called 'Expresso
Party', the boy quickly becomes a fashionable success. The first act
charts the new star's way to the top in a gritty, even vehement fashion
singing 'Expresso Party' in coffee bars, then on television and record,
and finally coming out with a new song when, his identification with
youth, sex and violence established, Johnnie plans to widen his appeal
with a 'mother' song. The act ends with Bongo in a white suit singing
'The Shrine on the Second Floor' to an adoring audience. On the way up
the ladder of success, a cavalcade of Soho characters pass by Johnnie
and Bongo: Maisie, the little stripper who longs to be a singer and who
can bring out the kinder side of Johnnie; Mayer, the pop recording man
who hates modern music and yearns for Aïda; K. Arnold Katz ('Kakky')
once a Hollywood producer and now a vagrant trying to set up one more
deal; Bongo's sodden father and sour, untrusting mother: all of them
used by Johnnie - and the even more unscrupulous Bongo - on their way
to the 'big time'.
In the second act Bongo moves out of Soho and into more moneyed waters.
At the Diplomatique Club his presence causes a riot and also gets him
noticed by the actress Dixie Collins and her wealthy friends. But while
Johnnie is busy moving the whole venture onto a classier level, Bongo
is slipping from his fingers. He begins mixing with Dixie's society friends,
and finally breaks a contract Johnnie has set up in order to fly off
to Majorca with the actress. Johnnie cannot persuade him to return and
ultimately hears that the boy has broken their management contract. Dixie,
it seems, has arranged for him to be represented by a more 'establishment'
agent. Johnnie is back where he started. But he will bounce back. In
a final tableau he is pushing his new protégée, Maisie,
on the road to hopeful stardom as Bongo abandons Dixie for another step
upwards in his career.
Expresso Bongo is a hard-hitting, toothy, satirical story of the
1950s, written with skill and a feeling for both its time and its place.
Its authors knew well both the East End and Soho backgrounds of which
they were writing and the music world in which much of their story was
set.
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