Darling of the Day
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Darling of the Day is a 1968 musical with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Yip Harburg. The title is a common Victorian/Edwardian phrase meaning "fashionable celebrity". The musical starred Vincent Price and Patricia Routledge. In spite of fine performances, and a score still held by many critics to be one of Styne's best the show closed after only 31 performances, and subsequent attempts at revival have made little headway.
Styne is supposed to have called this musical his "Lerner and Loewe" score, and the play can be seen as an upsidedown My Fair Lady.
[edit] Synopsis
Priam Farll (Vincent Price) is an artist, brilliant, unconventional and shy, although he can be violently outspoken. He once offended Queen Victoria, and was exiled to "the East" (shades of Gauguin) but Edward VII has succeeded to the throne and Farll has been recalled to London to receive a knighthood.
Appalled by "society's" expectations, Farll seizes the chance to "get out of the world alive" when his faithful butler suddenly dies, and their identities are confused. He is officially buried in Westminster Abbey (in the person of his butler) while he assumes the identitly of the deceased, Henry Leek.
He soon finds himself married to Alice Challice (Patricia Routledge), a bright, well-to-do Cockney widow, and settles down to a happy "upper working class" life - however complications naturally ensue. It takes a piece of truly Gilbertian nonsense to bring all to a satisfactory conclusion.
