50 Favourite Musicals: 43: FINGS AIN'T WOT THEY USED T'BE (1959) (Lionel Bart)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1959, Theatre Royal, Stratford East 

First seen by me: 2011, Union Theatre, London

Productions seen: two

Score: Lionel Bart
Book: Frank Norman

Plot:  1950s Soho; Fred runs a 'spieler' - a gambling bar/brothel - with his longtime girlfriend Lil, but their relatively peaceful life catering to brasses, pimps, bent coppers and ne'er-do-wells is threatened by the expansionist plans of a neighbouring thug Meatface...

Five memorable numbers: FINGS AIN'T WHAT THEY USED T'BE, WHERE DO LITTLE BIRDS GO?, THE CEILING'S COMING DAHN, POLKA DOTS, G'NIGHT DEARIE

Ex-con Frank Norman had originally sent his play to Joan Littlewood as a possible production for her Theatre Workshop company but Littlewood saw it's potential instead as a London musical and sent it to pop songwriter Lionel Bart - who had just written the lyrics for his first musical LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS - to see what he could come up with.  The musical took off like a rocket, straight from Stratford East into the West End where it ran for 886 performances and won the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Musical.  Despite it's mundane - and now rather dated - storyline, Bart's music and vibrantly non-pc lyrics still burst off the stage with his unmistakable signature cocky cockney bravado.  After a muddled and clumsy Union Theatre production - nothing new there - there was a much better revival at Stratford East in 2014.  However which cast nowadays can compare to the sensational original cast recording. recorded live, which features Glynn Edwards, Miriam Karlin, Barbara Windsor, Toni Palmer, James Booth and Yootha Joyce?   That original production, by the way, was choreographed by Jean Newlove who was pregnant with her daughter, Kirsty MacColl...

Here is a trailer for the 2014 Stratford East revival, staged to celebrate Joan Littlewood's centenary..