Based on
Terence Rattigan
's 1953 play
The Sleeping Prince
(which also was the source for the 1957 film
The Prince and the Showgirl
, starring
Laurence Olivier
and
Marilyn Monroe
),
The Girl Who Came to Supper
is set in London in 1911, but the major characters are the
Prince Regent of Carpathia
, who is in town for the coronation of
King George V
, and an American chorus girl with whom he becomes involved. The story of an older aristocratic man and a younger female commoner is reminiscent of
My Fair Lady
, the previous success for the show's producer,
Herman Levin
, and there are other echoes of that musical in
Noel Coward
's score, including the seemingly irrelevant medley of Cockney songs that features
Tessie O'Shea
and runs nearly 11 minutes. (It's sort of like
"Wouldn't It Be Loverly,"
"With a Little Bit of Luck,"
"Get Me to the Church on Time"
all mixed together.)
Jose Ferrer
, as the
Prince Regent
, sings to a diplomat of his dispassionate sense of how women should behave in
"Curt, Clear and Concise,"
much as
Henry Higgins
sang
"A Hymn to Him"
to
Colonel Pickering
in
.
"Coronation Chorale,"
the second-act opener, is similar to
"Ascot Gavotte."
And
Ferrer
's final wistful song,
"I'll Remember Her,"
is this show's
"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."
Not much like
Eliza Doolittle
, however, is
Florence Henderson
's chorus girl,
Mary Morgan
. She's too lively for that, particularly in her love song
"Here and Now"
and in her own lengthy second-act showpiece, the eight-minute
"The Coconut Girl,"
in which she explains the plot of the show she's in and sings all the songs. There is some typical
Coward
wit in the lyrics, and
O'Shea
Henderson
turn in strong performances, even if
is not the most original Broadway musical ever written. When this album was released in December 1963, the sequence of songs differed from the order in which the songs were performed in the show, probably for technical reasons having to do with how the LP tracked. For the 1992 reissue on CD and cassette, the sequence was altered to conform to the on-stage running order. ~ William Ruhlmann